Engineering Faculty Member Collaborates on Project Funded by Defense Threat Reduction Agency

MELBOURNE, FLA.—Ju Zhang, Florida Institute of Technology assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is a co-principal investigator with Thomas L. Jackson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Matthew Gross from the Naval Air Weapons Station in China Lake, Calif., on a project just selected by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) for a $450,000 award over three years.

The three collaborated on the proposal, “Multiscale Coupling Strategies for Multiphysics Simulation Tools.” In this work, they will conduct basic research into multiscale coupling strategies of the computational tools used in the numerical simulation of chemical reactions and fluid dynamics. The focus will be on predicting the flow dynamics at macro-scale containing the reacting system with embedded micro/meso-scale structures and physics.

The overall numerical framework will link calculations at a molecular level all the way up to those at macro-scale. “This is a very challenging task to fulfill in simulations involving a vast disparity of scales,” said Zhang.