A* STAR Programme - Boundary layer control via localised heating and cooling elements

Micro-Electrical-Mechanical systems (MEMS) type devices are increasingly becoming important in many applications such as flow control on aircraft wings, or in lab on chip technologies because of their miniature size and low power. The small dimensions also mean that these devices can be embedded in the boundary layer region and therefore have the potential of being used for active flow control.
The proposed project is aimed at studying how the presence of these devices affect the fluid flow properties and in particular what are the optimum shapes and configurations to effect maximum beneficial control. Can separated regions be reduced via these localised heating elements? How does heating or cooling affect the instabilities which are present in these types of flows. The project combines asymptotic analysis with full numerical computations. This project will be jointly supervised by staff at the University of Manchester and A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing in Singapore.

http://www.singaporeastar.manchester.ac.uk/projects/