New Grant: Award Supports AI and Engineering Research on Flow Boiling

June 9, 2022 – Principal investigators: Yoonjin Won, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and co-principal investigator Aparna Chandramowlishwaran, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science

Award: $520,000 over three years

Funding agency: Office of Naval Research

Project: Learning and Predicting Flow Boiling Principles: A Deep Learning Perspective

For more than a century, flow boiling has played a key role in many Department of Defense applications where engineered surfaces can improve their phase change performances. While it has been challenging to completely understand flow boiling physics, recent innovations in artificial intelligence have made it possible to incorporate machine-learning models into research on flow boiling. State-of-the-art machine vision and machine-learning methods can demonstrate the precise and automatic object prototyping of individual bubbles, identify hidden features and mechanisms, and link them with flow boiling physics, which would represent a game-changing innovation for thermofluidic engineering. Therefore, this project’s overarching goal is to provide a holistic description of dynamic flow boiling physics and to push the knowledge boundaries of thermofluidic science.

– Tonya Becerra