Aswin Gnanaskandan, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), has been awarded a three-year, $360,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to develop advanced computational methods for predicting cavitation and the damage it can cause to marine structures.
Cavitation occurs when rapid changes in liquid pressure produce vapor bubbles that subsequently collapse. Near solid surfaces, these collapses can generate intense, highly localized pressure loads that contribute to erosion of propellers, hydrofoils, and other components used in naval and marine systems. Accurately predicting where these damaging collapse events occur remains a major challenge for conventional computational models. Gnanaskandan’s project will develop a multiscale computational framework that tracks the evolution of individual cavitation bubbles while simultaneously modeling the larger-scale flow around a hydrofoil. This approach is designed to connect microscopic bubble-collapse events directly to the pressure loading and erosion risk experienced by the surface.
The project builds on Gnanaskandan’s research in computational multiphase flows, cavitation, bubble dynamics, and high-performance computing. His research group at WPI develops computational approaches for problems involving bubbles, droplets, particles, and their interactions with complex fluid flows.
