Dept. of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Seminar

PRESENTATION: Predicting how complex systems respond during rapid changes in operating conditions remains a fundamental challenge across engineering. In marine engineering, this challenge is particularly evident during transient ship maneuvers, such as accelerating, stopping, and turning, where strong interactions occur between the ship, its propulsion system, and the surrounding fluid. Recent advances in free-running computational simulations have enabled the study of these highly unsteady behaviors by combining high-fidelity numerical modeling with experimental data. The resulting analyses provide physical insight into the mechanisms governing transient response, and support ongoing efforts to improve modeling robustness.

PRESENTER: Christian Milano is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Iowa and a Graduate Research Assistant under Professor Frederick Stern. His research focuses on ship hydrodynamics simulations using CFDShip-Iowa, integrating computational results with experimental data from the University of Iowa to evaluate the state of the art in computational fluid dynamics for ship applications. His work contributes to international CFD validation efforts, including test cases for CFD workshops and NATO AVT working groups.