On February 22, the first day of the spring semester of SUSTech, Prof. Gretar Tryggvason, the Viola D. Hank professor at the University of Notre Dame and the chair of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, was invited to the 59th session of SUSTech Lecture to give a lecture on the topic “Direct Numerical Simulations of Complex Multiphase Flows”. Chaired by Prof. Xia Zhihong, the chair of department of mathematics, Vice President Tang Tao and the students listened to the lecture together.

Gretar Tryggvason is the Viola D. Hank professor at the University of Notre Dame and the chair of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. He received his PhD from Brown University in 1985 and was on the faculty of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor until 2000, when he moved to Worcester Polytechnic Institute as the head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He moved to the University of Notre Dame in 2010. Professor Tryggvason is well known for his contributions to computational fluid dynamics; particularly the development of methods for computations of multiphase flows and for pioneering direct numerical simulations of such flows. He served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Computational Physics 2002-2015, is a fellow of APS, ASME and AAAS, and the recipient of several awards, including the 2012 ASME Fluids Engineering Award.

During the lecture, Prof. Tryggvason introduced the direct numerical simulations (DNS) to follow the evolution of complex flows for sufficiently long time so that meaningful statistical quantities can be gathered. Results for relatively simple multifluid and multiphase systems with bubbles and drops in turbulent flows are now available, but new challenges are emerging.

During the Q&A Prof. Tryggvason answered questions raised by SUSTech students and faculty members.