New Assistant Professor Specializes in Multi-Phase Flows

Specializing in the numerical simulation and modeling of complex multi-phase flows, Vincent Le Chenadec will join Aerospace Engineering at Illinois in October as a new assistant professor.

His wife, Taraneh Sayadi, an expert in big data and the simulation of turbulent flows, also will join the AE Department as a new faculty member. Both Le Chenadec and Sayadi will have access to Illinois’ facility, Blue Waters, one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world and the fastest supercomputer on a university campus.

“Illinois has a really strong computational science background – it stands out in the U.S. and on the scale of the world,” Le Chenadec said, citing one of his reasons for coming to work at the university. “There is a continuous effort within the College of Engineering to promote (computational sciences), and to have collaborations across departments.”

Most recently, Le Chenadec has been a postdoctoral fellow in the Energetics and Combustion Laboratory (E.M2.C) in Paris, France.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Ecole Centrale Paris in June 2007, and received a master’s degree in mechanical engineering in September 2009 from Stanford University. In September 2012, he completed a PhD degree in mechanical engineering under the guidance of Prof. Heinz Pitsch at the Center for Turbulence Research, Stanford University.

Le Chenadec’s research focuses on large-scale numerical modeling of multi-scale, multi-physics and multi-phase flows. He work emphasizes the development of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) algorithms, and the use of High-Performance Computing capabilities for the simulation of turbulent reactive flows relevant to energy conversion and transportation systems.

The physics of fluids involving aircraft engines is very complex, Le Chenadec said. Through his studies, he gains understanding of the energy conversion process as the fuel mixes with the air, evaporates, and starts to burn to propel the aircraft. This involves a close examination of interface boundaries between fluids and solids, and liquids and gases. Only recently has computer power been sufficient to provide this detail.

Le Chenadec uses the information to develop equations that aircraft designers can then employ to gain cost savings and fuel conservation.
The new faculty member expects to collaborate with AE Profs. Philippe Geubelle and Jonathan Freund, and Associate Prof. Daniel Bodony, as well as with colleagues in other Engineering at Illinois departments, including Mechanical Science and Engineering.

Le Chenadec is expected to move to the Urbana campus in October. In addition to conducting research, he will begin teaching courses in the areas of computational fluid dynamics and numerical analysis in Spring 2015. He also hopes to design new courses.