Achievement

IGERT student Nathan Lane, in collaboration with an undergraduate Chemical Engineering student he mentored, and help from computer science advisors learnt and developed Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) visualizations that could be incorporated into research as well as an undergraduate fluid dynamics curriculum. Visualizations, both picture and video, were created for flows in pipes and packed beds of spherical particles. These are important topics in Chemical Engineering as chemical plants involve flow in complicated networks of pipes, and chemical reactors are often filled with spherically shaped catalyst particles that produce complex flow patterns. The visuals will compliment lessons on flow in pipes and flow in porous materials and will aid students in physically understanding 3D flow patterns, and pressure distributions in realistic systems. For IGERT student Lane, this was a valuable educational experience and achievement, impacting both research and undergraduate education.