TWINNING PROGRAM WITH GEORGIA, ROMANIA, AND UKRAINE

Paul Cizmas hosted Sorin Mitran, University of Politehnica Bucuresti of Romania, for three weeks in May 1999, during which the two investigators began their project. This visit also allowed Mitran access to a wide array of information sources available at the Texas A&M University. Cizmas visited Romania for a month in August 1999. While in Bucharest, he exchanged ideas not only with Mitran, but also with other professors in the Aerospace Engineering Department of the Politehnica University of Bucharest. Cizmas reports he "was surprised that, in spite of the poor information system, they were up to speed with many of the latest results in the field." The direct result of the trip to Bucharest has been the investigation of the turbulent potential model as a possibility of replacing the k - epsilon model. The first results from this project will be presented at the 36th Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, July 16-19, 2000, in Huntsville, Alabama. In another development, Mitran was recently notified that he has been awarded a long-term postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington. Therefore, while he will continue to interact with Mitran, Cizmas will be adding a new Romanian partner for the second year of his Twinning project. Dinu Bondar, a young colleague of Mitran's who is just completing his Ph.D. work, will make his first visit to Texas A&M later this year.

Update--2000

Cizmas made his second Twinning visit to Bucharest for three weeks in June 2000. In addition to continuing his collaboration with counterparts from the Politehnica University Bucuresti, he also had the opportunity to make a brief side visit to the Politehnica University of Timisoara, where he discussed possible future work with researchers from the Mechanical Engineering Department. Later in the year, new team member Dinu Bondar visited Texas A&M, where he applied his expertise to the task of upgrading the data acquisition system on the jet engine of the university's Propulsion Laboratory. This upgrade was essential to prepare the system for experimental validation of the numerical models previously developed during the project. In addition, Cizmas reports that code development on his turbulence model has also been completed during 2000. At the July 2000 Joint Propulsion Conference in Huntsville, he presented the results of the project in a paper entitled "LES Calibration of a Turbulent Potential Model for Turbomachinery Flows." Cizmas and his Romanian colleagues are currently seeking funding to continue their Twinning-sponsored research, but in the meantime, Cizmas has involved another specialist he met during his Bucharest visits in a Texas A&M project currently funded by the US Department of Energy.