How To Study High-Speed Flows
02-09-15
Joanna Austin, Professor of Aerospace, researches fundamental problems in reactive, compressible flows with applications in hypervelocity flight and planetary entry, supersonic combustion and detonation, bubble dynamics, and explosive geological events. She remarks, “gas dynamics, and particularly looking at gas dynamics in reacting flows… [is] the thing I really love. It's a very challenging, coupled, problem. As the fluid is going through the model that you're studying, you also have to account for the fact that the state of the fluid is changing—the gas is chemically reacting, so it's changing from reactants to products, or it's redistributing its energy states, or both. Understanding how best to model these processes, that's what excites me.” [Interview with Professor Austin]
Tags:
research highlights
GALCIT
Joanna Austin
Professor Ortiz Receives the Timoshenko Medal
01-28-15
Michael Ortiz, Frank and Ora Lee Marble Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, has been selected to receive the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Timoshenko Medal “for seminal, groundbreaking and creative contributions, particularly in the creation of the quasi continuum method, the formulation of an incremental variational principle to predict dislocation structures, the development of modeling fragmentation with cohesive models, and the formulation of integrators for elastoplastic materials and variational time integrators." [Caltech story]
More »
Tags:
honors
GALCIT
MCE
Michael Ortiz
The Sky Is the Limit: $7.8 Million Gift to Support Aerospace Innovation
01-27-15
Through three gifts to the EAS Division, investor and philanthropist Foster Stanback and his wife, Coco, aim to help Caltech advance innovation in space exploration, with the attendant benefits of an educated workforce, skilled jobs, and spinoff technologies. "The Stanback gifts contribute vitally to the EAS strategy of attracting the best faculty and students, then giving them the resources, acknowledgement, and support to shine. For space engineering, these gifts will allow us to perpetually fund bold seed projects—many of which will lead to spectacular inventions and technologies,” explains EAS Chair Ares Rosakis. [Caltech story]
Tags:
GALCIT
Guruswami Ravichandran
Ares Rosakis
Foster Stanback
Coco Stanback
Professor Rosakis Elected to Academia Europaea
11-03-14
Ares J. Rosakis, Theodore von Karman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering as well as the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, has been elected to the Academy of Europe (Academia Europaea) in the section of Physics and Engineering Sciences. The Academia Europaea was founded in 1988 and is an organization of eminent, individual scholars from across the continent of Europe. The 3000 members cover a wide range of academic disciplines including the humanities, social, physical and life sciences as well as mathematics, engineering and medicine. In addition to Professor Ares Rosakis, Caltech's Provost Edward Stolper, the Institute's past president David Baltimore, and Professor Alexander Varshavsky are members of the Academy.
Tags:
honors
GALCIT
MCE
Ares Rosakis
