Laser diagnostic investigations of flame structure.

Thermal Systems Engineering Research Program

Thermal Systems Engineering is concerned with fundamental studies of heat transfer, phase change and chemical reactions (especially combustion), with applications to power production, propulsion, global warming, fire suppression, MEMS and manufacturing. The research at Cornell includes microgravity experiments (laboratory, shuttle and space station), advanced laser diagnostics, and large-scale computations (using Cornell Theory Center's supercomputers). In addition to the courses listed below, graduate students in Thermal Systems Engineering often take courses in fluid mechanics, applied math, chemistry and computer science.

Faculty

C. Thomas Avedisian: Heat Transfer; Fluid Mechanics; Combustion.
Lance Collins: Turbulence Physics; Combustion; Aerosol Coagulation and Breakup Dynamics; Polymer Drag Reduction
David Erickson: Micro/Nano/Opto-fluidics; Electrokinetics; Thermal analysis for Lab-on-Chip devices; On-chip Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) Discrimination
Elizabeth Mills Fisher: Combustion; Combustion Chemistry
Frederick C. Gouldin: Combustion; Fluid Dynamics; Air Pollution; Incineration; Spectroscopy
Brian Kirby: Micro- and Nanofluidics Laboratory; Electrokinetic Flow; Colloid and Interface Science; Enzymatic Energy Conversion; Microbioanalytical Systems; Laser-Microfabrication.
Sidney Leibovich: Fluid Dynamics; Wave Propagation; Air-Sea Interactions; Stability Theory; Vortex Dynamics
Michel Y. Louge: Granular and Granular-Fluid Flow; Instrumentation; Experiments in Microgravity; Snow Science.
Stephen B. Pope: Combustion; Fluid Mechanics; Turbulence; Numerical Methods; Aerospace Propulsion; Turbulence and Combustion.
Kenneth E. Torrance: Heat Transfer; Fluid Mechanics; Computer Graphics
Nicholas Zabaras:  Hydrodynamic transport in random heterogeneous media; Inverse problems, Transport phenomena in materials processing, Materials Process Design and Control Laboratory

Thermal modeling of liquid- and solid-phase heat transfer in polymeric microsystems.

Graduate Courses

M&AE 524/624 Physics of Micro- and Nano-Scale Fluid Mechanics
M&AE 543 Combustion Processes
M&AE 608 Physics of Fluids
M&AE 643 Computational Combustion
M&AE 645 Turbulent Reacting Flows
M&AE 651 Conduction and Radiation Heat Transfer
M&AE 652 Convection Heat Transfer
M&AE 656 Nanoscale Energy Transport and Conversion
M&AE 737 Computational Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer