Biomimetics & Dynamics Laboratory

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A low turbulence open and closed jet tunnel of section (0.75x0.75x2) (dimensions in m). Speed upto 25m/s.

The tunnel is equipped with a gust chamber with frequency controlled gust.

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High speed computing, local clusters and connectivity with IIT Madras super clusters.

Laser based displacement and aerodynamic load measurement sensors.


Members:  PhD Students

W. Dheelibun Remigius, PhD, 2018.
Thesis title: Bifurcation analysis of a nonlinear spinning disc immersed in bounded compressible medium

Dheelibun's area of work was nonlinear dynamics. Nonlinear dynamical behaviour of a rotating flexible disk in acoustic fluid medium was investigated under different rotating conditions and dissipation mechanisms for associated bifurcations and fluid-elastic instabilities.

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J. Venkatramani, PhD, 2018.
Thesis title: Intermittency in a pitch-plunge aeroelastic system
Thesis co-advisor: Prof. S. Gupta, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras.

A classical pitch-plunge flutter model was developed and tested experimentally in the low speed tunnel of Biomimetics & Dynamics Lab under gusty flows. Numerical models were also developed under randomly fluctuating input flow. With both, the route to flutter manifested a new dynamical state called `intermittency' under the influence of stochastic noise. The mechanism behind this new dynamical route was established and nonlinear time series tools were employed to develop quantitative precursors to predict impending flutter instabilities.

Hridya P. Lal, PhD, 2018.
Thesis title: Reduced order modelling in stochastically parametered vibrating fluid structure interaction systems

Thesis co-advisor: Prof. S. Gupta, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras.

Stochastic reduced order models based on modal reduction techniques and stochastic spectral approaches were developed to reduce the size of large ordered randomly parametered fluid structure interaction systems and were used for dynamical analysis of the coupled problems. 

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Santhosh J. Ilango, PhD, 2017.
Thesis title: Stochastic analysis of flow through porous media using random solid-pore geometry as the input

Santhosh worked on uncertainty quantification of flow problems using high fidelity flow models. A novel stochastic input-output framework was developed in this study to propagate the effect of a very large number of random input variables with very good efficiency through nonlinear and complex flow models.

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Jithin Jith, PhD thesis submitted, 2018
Thesis title:
Acousto-elastic interactions in high pressure centrifugal compressors.
(presently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in our group)

Acoustic fluid-structure interaction (FSI) behaviour in a large order system idealising industrial compressors was studied in this thesis. FEM based computational models were developed by Jithin for the FSI study under the influence of non-ideal working fluids like CO2.  Effect of visco-thermal losses were considered through a linearized Navier-Stokes based solver (in-house code) and a novel model reduction strategy based on Krylov subspace approach was also proposed. Jithin's research was funded by a joint industry program with industry partners Shell, Siemens, GE, Man Diesel & Turbo, Mitsubishi (Oil & Gas industries) and Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO).

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Chandan Bose,  2014-present
Area of work: 
Investigation of unsteady flow-field and fluid structure interaction behaviour of flapping wings.

Thesis co-advisor: Prof. S. Gupta, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras.

Both rigid and flexible flapping wings are being studied by Chandan to understand the bifurcation dynamics of flapping wings. For rigid bodies bifurcations in the wake patterns and route to instability are of interest. In flexible bodies, the combined dynamics are found to be strongly dependent on fluid-structure combined parameters, such as fluid-solid mass ratio. Interesting routes of bifurcations so far unreported in flapping wing dynamics have been found, the corresponding unsteady flow-fields manifest novel wake patterns. Wind tunnel experiments with protypical models are also being carried out by Chandan. Please see Chandan Bose's personal page for more details.

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M.S. Aswathy, 2014-present
Area of work:
 Dynamics of vortex induced vibration of circular cylinders under stochastic noise

Bifurcation dynamics of vortex induced vibrations in the presence of input stchastic noise is the topic of her research. Noise is seen to destroy the sybchornisation behaviour of the fluid and the structural oscillators and the coupled dynamics show interesting behaviour during lock-in. The unsteady flow-field and the wake patterns manifest interesting patterns that reflect the transition from one dynamical state to another.

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Dipanjan Majumdar, 2015-present
Area of work: Dynamics and bifurcation of flapping wing flow-fields using immersed boundary method

An immersed boundary method based unsteady flow and flow-structure interaction solvers have been developed to study the dynamics of flapping wings. Transitions in the wake patterns at high Strouhal number ranges and the role of fundamental interaction mechanisms of near-field vortices are in focus.

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Varun H. S. (2016-present)
Area of work: Application of basin stability approach to flow and fluid structure interaction systems

Dynamical stability of fluid stucture interaction system involve a wide variety of bifurcations for different types of nonlinearities. A nonlinear concept based on basin stability approach is being amployed to study the stability of one and multiple solutions under external perturbations.

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Chhotelal Shah (2017-present) 
Area of work: Chord-wise flexible flapping wings

Most flapping wing studies involving flexible structural models consider span-wise flexibility of the wing. However, chord-wise flexibility can capture higher structural modes of oscillations and such behviour is expected when one is dealing with extremely light weight and highly flexible systems (thin fins, membrane wings). It is important to resolve the higher modes of oscillation in fluids which can significantly affect the corresponding vortex shedding and vortex interaction behaviour.


Members: M S Research Students

  1. Avisha Ghorpade (2017-present).      Area of work: Stochastic modelling of fin buffeting.                              Co-advisor: Prof. S. Gupta, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras.
  2. Rajanya Chatterjee (2017-present).       Area of work: Energy harvesting from flow induced oscillators.     Co-advisor: Prof. S. Gupta, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras.  
  3. M. T. Thanusha, 2018 (Thnusha is the winner of Pratibha, the Eaton excellence award for academic merit, 2015).      Title: Sampling strategies for discontinuous response surfaces encountered in an aeroelastic system with subcritical nonlinearity.         Area of work: Interpolation based response surface tools for uncertainty quantification with subcritical bifurcations
  4. Salil Harris, 2015.     Title:  Study of wake patterns past rigid and flexible flapping airfoils.   Area of work: Unsteady aerodynamics and bifurcations
  5. Harshini Devathi, 2014.     Title: A stall induced fluid structure interaction system under the influence of parametric uncertainties and random gust. Area of work: Novel adaptive polynomial chaos expansion approach and probability density evolution method (PDEM) for stochastic fluid structure interaction problems
  6. S. Venkatesh, 2013.    Title: Uncertainty quantification of an aeroelastic system under random gust using polynomial chaos expansion.  Area of work:  Random fatigue analysis in fluid structure interaction system
  7. Lalit K. Chandravanshi, 2011.       Title: Study of wake patterns behind an oscillating airfoil with and without gust effects.  Area of work: Gust alleviation capabilities of flapping wings
  8. Ajit Desai 2011.   Title: Analysis of a nonlinear aeroelastic system under parametric uncertainties using polynomial chaos expansion.  Area of work: Nonlinear aeroelasticity and limitations of spectral uncertainty quantification techniques

Members: M. Tech students

  1. Tarandeep Singh, 2018-2019 (under progress), Energy harvesting from vortex induced vibration.
  2. 2. Satish Jaiswal, 2018-2019 (under progress), Aeroelastic behaviour of a fin structure.
  3. 3. Piyush Tanwar, 2018, Lift augmentation and delaying flow separation by moving surface of an airfoil.
  4. 4. Abhigyan Belawal, 2018, Computational study of locomotion of fishes. 
  5. 5. Shubham Jain, 2017, Investigation of fluid structure interaction solvers with application in Micro Aerial Vehicles in OpenFOAM.
  6. 6. Vishnu Menon, 2017, Aeroelastic flutter phenomenon under gusty wind.
  7. 7. Piyush Jadhav, 2016, Quasi-steady fluid structure interaction of surf kites. Co-supervisor: Prof. P. Ramu, Engineering Design, IIT Madras.
  8. 8. Sandip Badrinath, 2015, A study on the transitional dynamics of the flow past a flapping airfoil at high Strouhal numbers.
  9. 9. Neel Harsh Patel, 2014, Dynamical behaviour of a structurally nonlinear airfoil under the influence of different types of gusts.
  10. 10. Naseef Hussain 2013, Reduced order modeling for dynamic analysis of engineering structures.
  11. 11. Derec Mathew 2013, Natural frequencies of centrifugal compressor impellers for high pressure applications.
  12. 12. Ajay Anthony, 2013, Response of wind turbine blades under stochastic wind.
  13. 13. Rohit Shukla, 2013, Nonlinear flutter analysis of leading edge vortex controller.
  14. 14. V. Abhishek, 2013, Uncertainty quantification in multi-scale modelling.                       Co-supervisor: Pro. S. Gupta, applied Mechanics, IIT Madras.
  15. 15. Mayank Patel, 2012, Nonlinear dynamics of control surface aeroelasticity and uncertainty quantification.
  16. 16. A. Anandraj, 2012, Stability analysis of an artillery rocket with different wrap-around fin configurations.
  17. 17. Amit Singh, 2011, Time-domain simulation of an airfoil using fluid-structure coupling through a twodimensional vortex lattice method and the effect of parametric uncertainty.
  18. 18. Vineeth V. Nair, 2010, Uncertainty Quantification of Subcritical Bifurcation in a Rijke Tube.                                                                                                                                                           Co-supervisor: Prof. R. I. Sujith, Aerospace Engineering, IIT Madras.
  19. 19. Anush Krishnan, 2009, Simulation of flow over a flapping airfoil using a discrete vortex method.  
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Biomimetics Lab Address

Biomimetics Laboratory,
Composite Technology Center (CTC) Building, Room 121,
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Chennai 600036, India.  

Lab Contact

Email: sunetra.sarkar@gmail.com Phone: +91 44 2257 5023, +91 44 2257 4024 
Fax: +91 44 2257 4002  

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News

1. Biomimetics Lab featured in HPCE Highlights of IITM.
Read here.
2. Biomimetics Lab featured in `Immerse', 2018 (IIT Madras' Annual Technical Magazine).
Read the full article here.