As excitement builds across campus for the launch of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Aeronautics (WISA), researchers in diverse disciplines are showcasing the ways their work connects with the new institute’s mandate.
One of those researchers is Sander Rhebergen, an associate professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics. Rhebergen’s specialization is in computational fluid dynamics. Research in fluid dynamics looks at the ways flow and resistance operate in liquids, gases and plasmas.
“Let’s say you want to design an airplane,” Rhebergen said. “You can create a scale model of an airplane and put it in a wind tunnel and do all kinds of experiments. What computational fluid dynamics does is allow you to do computer simulations instead, by solving these mathematical equations that describe how flow moves over an object.”
Rhebergen’s specific research is on the algorithms that these computer simulations use. His work in computational fluid dynamics informs several disciplines and can be taken up by engineers and designers in various applied fields.
Read more about Rhebergen's research and about WISA in this feature article on Waterloo News.