The MIT, Center for Ocean Engineering Vortical Flow Research Laboratory focuses on the study of hydrodynamic flows, by theoretical analysis, numerical simulations, and experimental investigations. Selected research interests of current VFRL members are given below.

Dr. Mohammad-Reza Alam

• Waves of an unsteady disturbance in a 2-layer fluid
• Wave-mud interaction

Dr. Kelli Hendrickson

• Multiphase Turbulent flow (e.g. ship wakes and pipe flows)
• Coupled air-water interface and boundary layer dynamics
• Viscous simulations and turbulence modeling of breaking water waves
• Water droplets, air cavity dynamics

Dr. Roland Bouffanais

• Mechanotactic cell aggregation
• Blind cave fish mapping through mechanosensing

Dr. Hongmei Yan

• Development of efficient computational tools
• Unstable motions of floating body in waves
• Water impact and ship slamming
• Cavity dynamics

Dr. Areti Kiara

• Smoothed particle hydrodynamics for free-surface flows

Sankha Banerjee

• Three-dimensional dynamics of a flapping flag in a uniform stream
• RANS modeling using macro-scale two-phase flow simulations

Bryce Campbell

• Nonlinear effects on interfacial wave growth into slug flow

Yulin Pan

• Numerical prediction of the performance of flapping foils

Meng Shen

• Wave effects on underwater imaging

Grgur Tokic

• Optimization of fish-like swimming

Wenting Xiao

• Rogue waves occurrence study using large-scale direct phase-resolved simulations
• Deterministic reconstruction and prediction of realistic ocean wavefield

Zao Xu

• Ocean surface induced underwater light polarization fluctuations