The mission of the Computational Mechanics Division is to provide fidelity CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) design and analysis to our Navy and non-Navy sponsors, employing state-of-the-art CFD methods and advanced physics modeling.

Click HERE for the Computational Mechanics organization chart.

• Atmospheric Dispersion
  • The CM Division has accomplished and is currently performing various projects related to modeling atmospheric transport and dispersion of a contaminant.
• Biological/Biomedical Flows
  • The CM Division is active in several fluid-mechanics research programs related to human systems.
• Bubbly Flows & Cavitation Inception
  • Cavitation inception is defined as the formation of vapor and gas filled voids in a liquid. Small-scale cavitation is studied because it can cause material damage as well the unwanted emission of  acoustic radiation.
• Drag Reduction and Flow Control
  • An in-house developed multi-phase CFD code, NPHASE-PSU was instrumented with the various physical models required to attack drag reduction.
• Eddy-Resolving Simulations
  • Eddy-resolving simulation techniques are alternatives to RANS (Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes) that can be accurate for flow classes where RANS models fail.
• Free Surface Flows
  • In Surface-Tracking Methods, the kinematic and dynamic free-surface boundary conditions are explicitly enforced. Implementation of tracking methods requires solution of an additional 2D hyperbolic wave equation (KFSBC), and dynamic motion of the grid to adapt to the free-surface wave field.
• Hydrodynamic-Hydroacoustic Coupling
  • A stochastic model for the space-time turbulent boundary-layer wall-pressure spectrum was developed that uses statistical data from Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solutions as input.
• Multiphase Flow CFD
  • Multiphase flows range from flows dominated by a single phase where we are interested in disperse, low-volume-fraction elements to flows where the two phases are present in nearly the same relative volumes. Inertial effects may cause the presence of even low volume fraction particles and droplets to have a significant effect on the mean, carrier flow.
• Nuclear Reactor Thermal-Hydraulics
  • The Division's thermal-hydraulic research activities include the development of detailed two-fluid (gas and liquid) models for analyzing various nuclear reactor coolant loop accident scenarios.
• Optimization
  • Optimization is a mathematical process that seeks a set of parameters describing a configuration that extremizes (i.e., minimizes or maximizes) some performance metric or cost function. In the case of hydrodynamic design, evaluation of the cost function generally requires a high-fidelity flow solution, so the construction of an efficient optimization approach can be a very challenging task.
• Overset Grid Methods
  • Overset grid techniques enable the extension of traditional structured and unstructured solution methods in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to problems of greater geometric complexity, including better resolution of geometric details and the simulation of bodies in relative motion.
• Thermal System Management
  • The CM Division has intensive capabilities to analyze thermal impacts on fluid flow and to design cooling ponds, building, and vehicles with full interaction between the thermal systems and the bounding fluids.
• Turbomachinery & Vehicle Analysis
  • Turbomachinery analysis using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a critical component of the ARL design methedology for propulsors and pumps for marine vehicles.
• Vehicle Manuevering
  • Analysis and design related to vehicle manuevering, dynamics, and stability is a growing field in the area of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).