Dr. Tat Acharya is a mechanical engineer who has been an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Engineering since 2016. Dr. Acharya is doing research in the field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and "my research group is actively involved towards using this state-of-the-art tool to study conventional and sustainable energy in thermal and fluid sciences applied to conventional and sustainable energy resources."
More about Dr. Acharya's research:
"We have been working on three different CFD projects: (a) carbon sequestration in geological formations, (b) the role of building materials in urban heat island effect in the Southern California region and (c) design of multiphase separators used in the petroleum industry. CFD can predict outcomes with reasonable accuracy that are otherwise available through expensive experiments. The results obtained are valuable to the researchers as well as the industry."
What the research looks like in practice:
"At the start, we need to understand the needs of the industry and the society. Also, researchers need to understand the work that has already been done in the field. Therefore, researchers in my group are initially involved with conducting literature survey to gain a thorough understanding of the research problem. Following this, I mentor them as they learn CFD. The exercise involves learning modeling of real-world systems and conducting simulation work."
The real-world impacts of the research:
"CFD is being actively used in many industries such as oil and gas, automotive, construction, agriculture, aviation, ocean engineering and space aeronautics. My CFD research group has published two journals articles in the recent past, and both of these papers are geared towards the petroleum industry and provide insights that are valuable to the industry."
Why Dr. Acharya is passionate about his research:
"The subject involves mathematics and physics that exist in nature. We are only trying to learn more about nature using a novel engineering tool and that’s very exciting to me as an early career faculty researcher. Students are interested because of the same reason and for the fact that adding CFD on their resume makes them more marketable to today’s engineering industry. The industry is interested because they can gain insight on processes without investing into expensive experiments and that saves them money!"
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