NSU used a part of its mega-grant given by the Ministry of Education and Science of the RF to create a new laboratory which is to study non-equilibrium flows. The Lab does research on how external environment influences spaceships entering the atmosphere.
The mega-grant from the Russian government in the amount of 90 mln rubles is to support research at NSU during a 3-year period and was obtained in December 2013.
The new lab is headed by a famous scientist Sergey Gimelshein, a Research Associate Professor of Astronautics at the University of Southern California. Sergey Gimelshein told the journalists that the new lab employs about 40 scientists including experts in computing and experimental aerodynamics who work at NSU and Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (SB RAS), students and postgraduates. Sergey Gimelshein himself, according to the mega-grant, is to work at NSU for at least 4 months per year.
According to Sergey Gimelshein, 鈥榥ow the staff has made good progress in the field of theoretical and computational research, greater than planned, but the experimental part goes slower as it requires special equipment.鈥� However, the scientist is sure that the necessary results should be obtained.
Presently, the staff of the Laboratory is developing new computational and experimental methods of modeling flows near space vehicles in order to be able to predict how the external environment will interact with the vehicles and what processes will be observed. Moreover, the field of research extends to studying the high-speed laminar-turbulent transition as well as features of multiple flows.
Sergey Gimelshein considers this research purely fundamental, but the models and methods developed can be widely applied not only in astronautics, but also in analytical chemistry, biotechnologies and pharmacology.
Due to collaboration between NSU and Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (SB RAS), we have equipment that allows modeling gas efflux, studying multiple flows and experimenting with laminar-turbulent transition. The head of the Lab believes that it will further help to develop new models for processes in physics and methods of computations, as well as improve computer modeling of complex non-equilibrium flows.
