Leaves, insect wings, and fish fins are only a few examples of flexible structures found in nature that come in a myriad of different shapes and sizes, which might affect the way they interact with the surrounding flow. This idea inspired us to study how the planform shape of cantilevered flexible sheets or flags affects their flapping dynamics, critical flutter velocity, and the aerodynamic forces they experience. The shape design space of such flags is vast, and only a selected number of shapes can be tested using conventional supervised experiments. In this talk, I will first discuss results on the effect of aspect ratio and taper of flags on their flapping dynamics using conventional experiments. Then, I will present the self-exploring automated experiment using (industrial) robots that we have developed to cover and explore a larger portion of the input parameter space.
Karen Mulleners - Shaping up to explore and exploit the fluid-structure interactions of flags
Karen Mulleners is an associate professor in the institute of mechanical engineering in the school of engineering at EPFL. She is the head of the unsteady flow diagnostics laboratory (UNFoLD). She is an experimental fluid dynamicist who focuses on unfolding the origin and development of unsteady flow separation and vortex formation. Karen studied physics in Belgium (Hasselt University, previously Limburgs Universitair Centrum) and the Netherlands (TU Eindhoven). She received her PhD in mechanical engineering from the Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany in 2010 for her work on dynamic stall on pitching airfoils that she conducted as a member of the German aerospace centre (DLR) in Göttingen. Before joining EPFL in 2016, Karen was a (non-tenure track) assistant professor at the Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany.
Please visit her webpage for more details.