Christensen, Mejia-Alvarez receive Frenkiel Award

Kenneth Christensen, an associate professor and Kritzer Faculty Scholar in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, and his former graduate student Ricardo Mejia-Alvarez, were recently honored at the 64^th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics in Baltimore, Maryland.

On November 20, the two received the 28th François Naftali Frenkiel Award for Fluid Mechanics for their paper, “Low-order representations of irregular surface roughness and their impact on a turbulent boundary layer,” which was published in Physics of Fluids in 2010. They were presented with a scroll bearing the award citation: “For its novel use of manufactured wall surface roughness models to elucidate the effect of roughness scales on the behavior of rough-wall boundary layers in developing and developed conditions.” This research was funded by a Young Investigator Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Hypersonics and Turbulence Program managed by Dr. John Schmisseur.

On November 22, Christensen gave the esteemed Frenkiel Award Lecture. This presentation was titled “Low-Order Representations of Irregular Surface Roughness and Their Impact on a Turbulent Boundary Layer.”

The purpose of the Frenkiel Award is to recognize significant contributions in fluid mechanics by young investigators (younger than 40 years of age). Named after Dr. F. N. Frenkiel, founder and long- time editor of Physics of Fluids, the award is sponsored by the Division of Fluid Dynamics of the APS and is given annually to a young author of a paper that has been recently published in Physics of Fluids. Throughout his career, Frenkiel published extensively in the field of turbulent flows and pioneered the application of high-speed digital computing methods to the measurement of turbulence and the mathematical modeling of urban pollution. He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He retired in 1981 and passed away in 1986.

Christensen joined the University of Illinois in 2004, serving first on the TAM faculty and then joining MechSE when the departments merged in 2006. He is also currently a faculty affiliate in the departments of Aerospace Engineering and Geology, and he directs the Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Flow, whose research activities include experimental studies of turbulence, microfluidics, and geophysical flows, as well as instrumentation development. He also serves as associate director of the International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research (I2CNER) Satellite Center at Illinois. He is a member of the editorial board of Measurement Science and Technology, is an Associate Fellow of AIAA, and has received the Ralph Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, and the NSF CAREER Award.

After earning his MS degree in thermal engineering at the University of Antioquia in 2004, Mejia-Alvarez obtained a Fulbright fellowship to pursue PhD studies at Illinois under the supervision of Christensen. In 2010, he earned his PhD degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics for his work on turbulent boundary layers over highly irregular rough surfaces. After concluding his PhD program, he joined the Extreme Fluids Team at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. His current work focuses on shock-driven instabilities.
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Contact: Kenneth Christensen, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, 217/333-0966.

Writer: William Bowman, associate director of communications, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, 217/244-0901.

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.