Skip to main content

Mechanical Engineering

Fluids and Materials

Fluids engineering, which involves both liquid and gas flows, is a broad field that includes important applications in aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, combustion and engines, microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip devices, energy production and storage (e.g., wind, hydro, and nuclear power), hemodynamics and biomedical flow, environment and water treatment, and so on. In the department of mechanical engineering, we have particular focuses on both fundamental fluid transport and various practical applications of fluids engineering. These focused areas include:

  1. Use advanced laser diagnostic technology, chemical reactions and pollutant generation to study in flames and combustion in gas turbines, engine ignition, and natural gas appliances.
  2. Develop fluidic biomaterials and medical devices for diagnosis, prognosis, therapy, and surgery treatment of disease and healing of tissue.
  3. Develop multiphase materials and devices for energy storage and water treatment.
  4. Use high-performance computing and computational modeling (e.g., computational fluid dynamics) techniques to study the fluid flow in various fluid flow applications such as those mentioned above. 

Leon Bellan

Research Focus: Microfluidics, microfluidic materials, smart materials, biomaterials, micro and nanotechnology, bioMEMS. 		10

Xiaoguang Dong

Research Focus: The design, manufacture and control of miniature soft robots, and their applications in minimally invasive medicine, microfluidics and biomechanics. The design, manufacture and control of miniature swarm robots, and their applications in biomedicine and biomechanics. The modeling, design, manufacture and control of intelligent soft materials 		10

Deyu Li

Research Focus: Micro/Nano scale energy and molecular transport phenomena,. Nanofabrication techniques, Molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo Simulation, Micro/Nanofluidics.   		10

Haoxiang Luo

Research Focus: Computational fluid dynamics, biofluids, fluid-structure interaction, microfluidics; biomimetic aerial/underwater vehicles, biomedical flows. 		10

Robert Pitz

Research Focus: Laser diagnostics, laminar & turbulent combustion, turbulence-chemistry interaction, pollutant formation, supersonic combustion, gas turbine combustion, rocket propulsion, Raman scattering, laser-induced fluorescence, molecular-tagging velocimetry. 		10