Ph.D. Candidate
Ian began pursuing his Ph.D. in 2020 after graduating Summa Cum Laude from Duke's undergraduate program with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. He studies under Professor Earl Dowell and is exploring buffet in transonic flow simulations.
Buffet is a self-sustaining limit cycle oscillation in which a shockwave oscillates, inducing oscillations throughout the flowfield that are particularly pronounced in the flow-separated region and carried through the wake. Simplified models describing the mechanism often fall far short of numerical solutions and experiments in predicting the onset and amplitude of the phenomenon -- our understanding of the exact mechanism, beyond a direct application of the Navier-Stokes equations, remains incomplete. In experiments buffet has shown sensitivity to many parameters -- Mach number, Reynolds number, airfoil/wing geometry, and angle of attack being among the most critical; computational fluid dynamics exhibits these same sensitivities, with additional sensitivity to model parameters and challenges related to numerical error.
Contact Information
- Office Location: Hudson 177
- Email Address: ike@duke.edu
Research Interests
Ian is particularly interested in the study of aeroelastic instabilities and the application of computational fluid dynamics.