UNS: A Collaborative Approach to Exploring Control Strategies Based on Optimally-Growing Distrubances for Complex Flows

Effective and efficient control of complex turbulent flows encountered in many disciplines remains an elusive but ambitious goal for the fluid dynamics research community. This is because developing effective control strategies requires multi-disciplinary and tightly integrated approach that uses theory, simulations and requisite experiments to first elucidate the relevant fundamental physics of the flow being controlled and then develops appropriate control methods to apply the requisite control inputs. Such an integrated approach has been notably lacking in studies to date. This project addresses this shortcoming by pursuing a multi-pronged, integrated, theoretical/computation and experimental approach that combines first principles/fundamental analysis with robust, detailed experiments that allow verification and provide fundamental insight into fluid dynamics phenomena of practical interests.