RESEARCH -

What We Study

Our research spans several interconnected areas in fluid mechanics and transport, including the following four themes.

Environmental Hydrodynamics and Water Quality

Hypersalinity in the Pecos River-Red Bluff Reservoir system of West Texas limits surface water use for irrigation and municipal supply and degrades aquatic habitat. A Delft3D Flexible Mesh hydrodynamic and water quality model of the river-reservoir system simulates flow, water level, and salinity transport, and is calibrated and validated against observed water levels and salinity. The model is used to test polished desalinated produced water as a supplemental source for lowering salinity. The scenarios vary from discharge location, rate, and timing. The aim is to find management strategies that bring salinity closer to irrigation-suitable levels without raising the risk of floodplain inundation.

Multiphase and Particle Laden Flows

Cohesive sediment in rivers, estuaries, and the deep sea is carried by clay-laden suspensions with non-Newtonian, time-dependent rheology: structure builds at rest and breaks down under shear. We examine how concentrationof fine solids and aging changes the turbulence that keeps sediment in suspension and how it controls the segregation of sand-sized particles. Velocity fields are measured with stereoscopic two-dimensional, three-component (2D3C) particle image velocimetry in a turbulence chamber, with clear water as the reference case.

Environmental Turbulence and Flow Dynamics

This research primarily focuses on turbulence-aerosol, studying how turbulent eddy scales and dissipation effects particle behavior, transport, dispersion and spatial mixing. Experimental investigations use Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) to characterized turbulent flow structures and their interaction with different aerosol particles. Numerical study, such as Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) and Lagrangian particle tracking using Discrete Phase Model (DPM), supplement the experimental investigation to analyze turbulence-driven aerosol dynamics. The broader purpose is to gain a greater understanding of aerosol behavior in complex environmental and engineering flow systems by integrating controlled chamber experiments with numerical modeling.

Interfacial Transport in Engineered Systems

This reserach studies the deposition and mineral scaling at fluid–solid interfaces degrade heat transfer and increase hydraulic resistance in heat exchangers, pipelines, and desalination systems. We couple computational fluid dynamics with particle image velocimetry to resolve near-wall velocity, turbulent kinetic energy, and temperature fields in tube-array geometries.