Fellows 2009-2010
Mihai Pruna
Ph.D. (1st year), Mechanical/Aerospace Engineering
Year in graduate program: 1st year (September 2009)
Research Topic: Computational Fluid Dynamics
Partner School: Boys and Girls High School
Partner Teacher: Tanya Wardally
Email Mihai
Research
Under the guidance of Professor George Vradis, Mihai is developing new computational tools and methods to improve the modeling of high speed air flows around aerospace vehicles. Faster solutions for the Navier-Stokes equations will be sought for steady and unsteady supersonic and hypersonic regimes. Mihai's extensive programming and software integration experience will be well used in the development of computational fluid dynamics codes that supplement or complement commercially available software.
Figure: Supersonic flow around a blunt body in MicroCFD.
Integration in The Class Room
Mihai is based at Boys and Girls High School, in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. He is involved with teaching and developing the curriculum for a C++ programming course. Mihai is constantly creating activities that introduce his students to aviation and aerospace engineering concepts. One of the experiments performed in the classroom draws from his experience as a flight test engineer. Students perform a mission using a flight simulator and record aircraft performance data. They follow up with a data post-processing assignment. With AMPS provided LEGO NXT kits, Mihai has been able to perform physics experiments that involve programming and data logging. Students measured the period of a pendulum built with LEGO parts and compared it to values they had calculated. Mihai is also striving to teach his students scientific and engineering programming. Future activities will introduce students to aerodynamics and computational fluid dynamics.
Figure: Classroom test flight experiment using FlightGear flight simulator.
1 - AMPS Fellow; 2 - CBRI Fellow