A&A Distinguished Speaker Beverley McKeon

Описание: Defining coherent structures for flow modeling: identification, dynamical significance and low-order representation

Abstract:
While a single definition for a coherent structure has been the topic of debate over many years, it can be agreed that the eye is drawn to certain motions that are persistent in space and time in a range of flows. Here we investigate flow-specific descriptions of coherence associated with specific scientific questions and practical applications. After discussing the identification and classification of important structure types, we outline building block models for each in wall-bounded turbulence. Simple theoretical rules governing the forcing that sustains the structures are compared with data-driven characterization of key nonlinear interactions. The results are used to outline a skeleton for coherent structures that, for example, can be used to improve the representation of the wall region in wall-modeled LES, as well as to understand sustaining mechanisms in wall turbulence in a manner amenable to reduced order modeling.

Bio:
Beverley J. McKeon is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford, effective January 1, 2023. Previously she was the Theodore von Karman Professor of Aeronautics at the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at Caltech (GALCIT) and former Deputy Chair of the Division of Engineering & Applied Science. She received her B.A., M.A. and M.Eng. from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University under the supervision of Lex Smits. She completed postdoctoral research and a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship at Imperial College London before starting at Caltech in 2006. Her research interests include interdisciplinary approaches to manipulation of boundary layer flows using morphing surfaces, fundamental investigations of wall turbulence and the influence of the wall at high Reynolds number, the development of resolvent analysis for modeling turbulent flows, and assimilation of experimental data for efficient low-order flow modeling. Prof. McKeon is a Fellow of the APS and the AIAA and the recipient of a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the DoD in 2017, the Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE) in 2009 and an NSF CAREER Award in 2008 as well as Caltech’s Shair Program Diversity Award, Graduate Student Council Excellence in Mentoring Award and Northrop Grumman Prize for Excellence in Teaching. She currently serves as co-Lead Editor of Physical Review Fluids, as Physical Sciences co-captain on the National Academies Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences Research in Space 2023-32, and on the editorial board of the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics. She is Past Chair of the US National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.