The link to the 2023-2024 newsletter of the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Industrial Engineering at UTSA can be found HERE.

• Matthew Holland (CTVLab member) has participated in the AIAA SCITECH 2024 Forum 29 July – 2 August 2024, Las Vegas, Nevada. Contribution title “Periodicity detection methodology in spatially-developing turbulent boundary layers” (presentation and proceeding)

• CTVLab members have participated in two conferences. Odai Natsheh delivered a presentation titled “Compressibility effects on the budget of the momentum & energy equations in turbulent boundary layers” at the ASTFE TFEC2024 Conference. Christian Lagares (“Turbulence Modelling: An inverse problem or a forward dilemma?”) and Guillermo Araya (“The effect of wall curvature on supersonic turbulent boundary layers at high Reynolds numbers via DNS”) participated in the American Physical Society’s April Meeting 2024, Sacramento, California on April 3-6, 2024.

• The CTVLab welcomes new members: Sakshi More (graduate research assistant), Dr. Subhajit Roy (postdoctoral research associate) and Dr. Rakesh Ranjan (research scientist).

• Introduction to Supercomputing: Online free NSF-sponsored workshop for 1st and 2nd year undergraduate students (high school students from 11 and 12 grades are also encouraged to participate) is organized on February 15, 2024. More information and registration details can be found HERE. A flyer with workshop information can be downloaded from Flyer-Introduction to Supercomputing

The Special Issue “High-Speed Aerodynamics and High Energy and Efficiency Aerospace Propulsion System: Modeling and Optimization” is focused on documenting innovative developments in the fields of high-speed fluid dynamics related to external and internal fluid flows for aerospace applications and basic research.

Dr. Guillermo Araya
Guest Editor

• Matthew Holland (CTVLab member) has participated in the AIAA SCITECH 2024 Forum 8-12 January 2024, Orlando, FL. Contribution title “Investigation of Unconventional Coherent Structures in Implicit Large Eddy Simulations of Supersonic Turbulent Boundary Layers” (presentation and proceeding)

• Some CTVLab members (C. Lagares, D. Paeres, M. Ramirez and G. Araya) have participated in the 21st International Conference of Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics, Crete, Greece (September 11-17, 2023) via four virtual presentations and four proceedings.

• Undergraduate student Brandon Antron was awarded a fellowship for the Summer and Fall 2023 Klesse College UG Research Program at UTSA. Congrats!

• The CTVLab welcomes new graduate research assistants (Akshay Kulshrestha and Matthew Holland) and undergraduate research assistant, Brandon Antron, who joined us in 2023.

• Dr. Araya was invited to the 2023 Unsteady Aerodynamics Program Review (July 10-13 2023) for an oral presentation (“Coherent structure assessment in high-speed crossflow jets”) of AFOSR award #FA9550-23-1-0241.

• -The NSF-CAREER additional funding request (“CAREER: High fidelity numerical simulations of turbulent flow separation at high Reynolds numbers with passive scalar transport”) has been approved by NSF on July 12, 2023 (additional amount: $67,277)
  -DoD award ($799,913 for four years). Title “Novel Architected Materials for Drag Reduction and Flow Control in Hypersonic Vehicles”. PI: Dr. Restrepo, Co-PIs: Drs. Combs, Millwater and Araya
   

• PI Araya has been awarded $97,097 by the AFOSR to analyze the dynamics of turbulent coherent structures in high-speed crossflow jets via Direct Numerical Simulation (#FA9550-23-1-0241).
• Program Officers: Dr. Roger Greenwood.
• Period of performance: 1 MAY 2023 through 30 APR 2025.

Dr. Alan B. Craig is an independent consultant in Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Visualization, and High Performance Computing. He was invited by the CTVLab to collaborate in research projects and to deliver a Mechanical Engineering Dept. seminar on April 20, 2023 titled “VR, AR, AND THE BRAIN: CHANGING THE WAY WE TEACH, LEARN, AND RESEARCH.”

• Modeling Your World: Online free NSF-sponsored workshop for high school students is organized on April 29, 2023. More information and registration details can be found HERE.

•  The NSF-CAREER award transfer to UTSA (“CAREER: High fidelity numerical simulations of turbulent flow separation at high Reynolds numbers with passive scalar transport”) has been approved by NSF on January 19, 2023.

• Modeling Your World: Online free NSF-sponsored workshop for high school students is organized on March 17, 2023. More information and registration details can be found HERE.

• Dr. Araya was appointed the Wayne and Julie Fagan Endowed Fellowship in Mechanical Engineering in the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design (UTSA) on January 18, 2023.

• Dr. Araya has started a tenured academic position as associate professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Texas at San Antonio from January 1, 2023.

• Dr. Araya was invited to the 2022 AFOSR/HVSI/ONR High-Speed Aerodynamics Annual Review (July 18-22 2022) for an oral presentation (“Effects of wall curvature on hypersonic turbulent spatially-developing boundary layers”) of AFOSR award #FA9550-17-1-0051.

• The HPCVLab has been awarded $210,053 by the AFOSR for the project titled “Coherent structure assessment in high-speed crossflow jets” (#FA9550-22-1-0089) in collaboration with Dr. Jansen from the University of Colorado-Boulder.
• Program Officers: Dr. Gregg L. Abate and Dr. Daniel Montes.
• Portfolio: Unsteady Aerodynamics and Turbulent Flows.
• Period of performance: February 1, 2022 to January 31, 2025.

• Our project titled “Scientific Visualization of Big Data” was funded by the CAWT-ITG3 program (NSF #1849243), $80,000, 08/12/2021 to 08/11/2022

• Dr. Araya was invited to the 2021 AFOSR/HVSI/ONR High-Speed Aerodynamics Annual Review (July 19-23 2021) for an oral presentation (“Effects of wall curvature on hypersonic turbulent spatially-developing boundary layers”) of AFOSR award #FA9550-17-1-0051.

• Prof. Beverley J. McKeon from the California Institute of Technology delivered a webinar titled Control of turbulent wall shear flows and the potential for “designer turbulence” on Wednesday, May 5th, 2021 3:00PM – 4:00PM invited by the HPCV lab.

• Student Christian Lagares was awarded the 2021 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF). The project title is “Towards advanced turbulence modelling in reacting hypersonic flows and complex geometries via Direct Numerical Simulation and Machine Learning.” Congrats!

• Christian Lagares, David Paeres and Guillermo Araya participated in the 2021 AIAA SciTech Forum. 11–15 & 19–21 January 2021 (VIRTUAL EVENT) by means of oral presentations and conference proceedings.

• Christian Lagares, David Paeres and Guillermo Araya participated in the 73^rd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics. November 22–24, 2020 (Virtual event) by means of oral presentations and video displays. 

• Dr. Araya was granted the 2018-2019 Distinguished Professor Award, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at UPRM.

• Dr. Araya was selected AIAA Associate Fellow Class of 2021.

• Dr. Araya was invited to the 2020 AFOSR/ONR/HVSI Hypersonic Aerothermodynamics Portfolio Review (Virtual) for an oral presentation (“Effects of wall curvature on hypersonic turbulent spatially-developing boundary layers”) of AFOSR award #FA9550-17-1-0051.

• Student German Saltar was awarded the 2020 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF). Congrats!

• Doctoral Candidate Christian Lagares was awarded the “Bridge to the Doctorate” fellowship from the National Science Foundation through the Puerto Rico Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (PR-LSAMP). The proposed project is titled “Advanced Turbulence Modeling in Reacting Hypersonic Flows and Complex Geometries via DNS”. Congrats!

• Dr. Araya was awarded a 2019-CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation from the Fluid Dynamics program (CBET). The project is titled “CAREER: High fidelity numerical simulations of turbulent flow separation at high Reynolds numbers with passive scalar transport”. The proposed research will provide foundational knowledge on an issue in fluid dynamics that is not well understood: flow separation and its association with heat and contaminant transport.

• Dr. Araya gave a presentation titled “Reynolds number dependency in supersonic spatially-developing turbulent boundary layers” at the 2020-AIAA SciTech Forum, 6 – 10 January, Orlando, FL, 2020.

• During Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 the HPCVLab organized two interesting seminars: “Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR): The Media and Technology” by Dr. Alan Craig (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and “Towards scale resolving simulations of industrial relevant turbulent flows: what can we do and what are we missing?” by Dr. Oriol Lehmkuhl (Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain)

• Student Manuel Santiago has been funded by the XSEDE EMPOWER Program to work on the project title “High-order Statistics of Turbulent Boundary Layers via GPU-oriented Programming” under the supervision of Dr. Araya.

• Christian Lagares joined the HPCVLab as a PhD student and Research Assistant (Fall 2019).

• German G. Saltar received the NASA PR Space Grant Fellowship ($10,000) for the 2019-2020 academic year on July 17, 2019. Congrats!

• Dr. Araya was invited to the 2019 AFOSR/ONR/HVSI Hypersonic Aerothermodynamics Portfolios Review for an oral presentation of award #FA9550-17-1-0051. The event was held during July 8-12, 2019 in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at the University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO.

• Dr. Araya gave two presentations titled “Direct simulation of a Mach-5 turbulent spatially-developing boundary layer” and “Visualization of turbulent events in wall-bounded flows via Virtual Reality” at the 49th AIAA Fluid Dynamics Conference, AIAA AVIATION Forum, (AIAA 3131876) 17 – 21 June, Dallas, TX, 2019.

• Dr. Todd Michal from The Boeing Company delivered a presentation titled “Development of an Anisotropic Adaptive Meshing Capability with Application to Boeing Aircraft” via videoconference on November 27, 2018 invited by Dr. Araya and sponsored by the AIAA-Mayaguez student branch.