Department of Mechanical Engineering

Danesh K. Tafti


Danesh K. Tafti



Professor

114 I Randolph Hall
540-231-9975
540-231-9100- FAX

dtafti@vt.edu


Education Research
Teaching
Experience
Honors
Publications


Education

Ph.D. Penn State University 1989
M.S. Texas Tech University 1983
B.E. Bombay University 1980

 

Research

For more information, please go to the High Performance Computational Fluid Thermal Science and Engineering Group web page.

Major fields of research are computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer as applied to engineering systems. Areas of research are heat transfer enhancement in compact heat exchangers, turbine blade cooling, microfluidics, high performance computing, large-scale, time-dependent parallel computations of transitional and turbulent flows.

Some current projects are:

  • Air-side heat transfer enhancement in compact heat exchangers: Compact heat exchangers are used extensively in the automobile, aerospace, and Heating, Ventilation & Air-Conditioning (HVAC) industries. The performance of heat exchangers is limited by the air-side heat transfer coefficient. The research aims at understanding the performance of different augmentation surfaces through the use of high fidelity computer simulations.
  • Multi-physics computations in micron scale (10-6 m) devices: Micron scale devices have important applications in medicine, aerospace, and other emerging industries. Flow of gases and liquids in micron scale devices exhibit a range of phenomena not encountered in large scale devices. Our research is developing computational tools for simulating electro-osmotic and electrophoretic effects for lab-on-a-chip applications.
  • Terascale Computing in Computational Fluid Dynamics: Unprecedented advances have been made in computer hardware with the ability to put together hundreds or thousands of processors in geographically distributed clusters on a GRID with high bandwidth networks. Our research aims at developing computational fluid dynamics simulation software, which can take advantage of these distributed facilities for computations, data archiving, visualization and analysis.
  • Enhanced prediction techniques for internal cooling of turbine blades: Turbine blades are subjected to very high temperatures and have to be cooled internally by passing cooling air through roughened serpentine channels. Our research is evaluating and developing enhanced prediction techniques based on large-scale time-accurate simulations of the highly turbulent flow and heat transfer under the effects of rotation and buoyancy forces.


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Teaching Activities

ME 3304 : HEAT AND MASS TRANSFER
Comprehensive basic course in heat and mass transfer for mechanical engineering students. Principles of conduction, convection, and radiation with applications to heat exchangers and other engineering systems. Pre: 3105 or 3114; Co: 3404. (3H,3C). II,III.

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Experience

Before coming to Virgnia Tech in January of 2002, Dr. Tafti served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at West Virginia Institute of Technology from 1988-1989, and then as a post-doctoral associate in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign. He joined the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois in 1991 as a Research Scientist, where he founded and led a group in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). He was also a faculty affiliate in the Mechanical Engineering Dept. and a faculty in the Computational Science and Engineering Program.


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Honors

No honor listed

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Publications

  • D. L. Ma, D. Tafti, and R. D. Braatz. Compartmental modeling of multidimensional crystallization. Int. J. of Modern Physics B, Special Issue on Crystallization and Interfacial Processes, accepted.

  • Tafti D. K., Zhang, X., Geometry Effects on Flow Transition in Multilouvered Fins - Onset, propagation, and Characteristic Frequencies, Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer, Vol. 44/22, pp. 4195-4210, 2001.

  • Zhang, X. and Tafti D. K., Classification and Effects of Thermal Wakes in Multilouvered Fins, Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer, Vol. 44/13, pp. 2461-2473, 2001.

  • Tafti D. K., Zhang L.W., and Wang, G. A Time-Dependent Calculation Procedure for Fully Developed and Developing Flow and Heat Transfer in Louvered Fin Geometries, Num. Heat Transfer A, 35(3), pp.225-249, 1999.

  • Wang, G. and Tafti D.K., Performance Enhancement on Microprocessors with Hierarchical Memory Systems for Solving Large Sparse Linear Systems, Int. J. of Supercomputing Applications and High Performance Computing, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 63-79, Spring 1999.

  • Zhang, L, Balachandar S. and Tafti D. K., Effects of Intrinsic Three Dimensionality on Heat Transfer and Friction Loss in a Periodic Array of Parallel Plates, Numerical Heat Transfer, Part A, 31, pp. 327-353, 1997.

  • Zhang, L., Tafti D. K., Najjar, F., and Balachandar S., Computations of Flow and Heat Transfer in Parallel-Plate Fin Heat Exchangers on the CM-5; Effects of Flow Unsteadiness and Three-Dimensionality, Int. J. of Heat Mass Transfer, vol. 40, No. 6, pp. 1325-1341, 1997.

  • Tafti D. K. Comparison of Some High-Order Formulations With a Second-Order Central-Difference Scheme For Time Integration Of The Incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations, Computers and Fluids, vol. 25, No. 7, pp. 647-665, 1996.

  • Najjar. F. and Tafti D. K., Study of Discrete Test Filters and Finite Difference Approximations for the Dynamic Subgrid-Scale Stress Model, Physics of Fluids 8(4), pp. 1076-1088, April 1996.

  • Tafti, D. K., Alternate Formulations for the Pressure Equation Laplacian on a Collocated Grid for Solving the Unsteady Incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations, J. of Comp. Physics 116, pp. 143-153, January 1995.

  • Tafti, D. K., Vorticity and Scalar Transport in Separated and Reattached Flow on a Blunt Plate, Physics of Fluids A 5(7), pp. 1661-1673, July 1993.

  • Tafti, D.K. and Vanka, S.P., A Three-Dimensional Numerical Study of Flow Separation and Reattachment on a Blunt Plate, Physics of Fluids A 3 (12), pp. 2887-2909, Dec.1991.

  • Tafti, D. K. and Vanka, S. P., A Numerical Study of the Effects of Spanwise Rotation on Turbulent Channel Flow, Physics of Fluids A 3 (4), pp. 642-656, April 1991.

  • Tafti, D. K. and Yavuzkurt, S., Prediction of Heat Transfer Characteristics of Discrete Hole Film Cooling for Turbine Blade Applications, Journal of Turbomachinary, Trans. of ASME, Vol. 112, (3), pp. 504-511, July 1990.


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