Nina Shapley Granted National Science Foundation (NSF) Award

Associate Professor Nina Shapley (Co-PI) was recently awarded funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the interactions of polymers and particles in complex fluid flows and how they impact flow instabilities, where a small change in operating conditions causes a significant difference in observed flow patterns. The joint study with Professor Parisa Mirbod (PI), of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois-Chicago, will involve computational modeling, particle image velocimetry (PIV) of dilute particulate systems and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of concentrated particulate systems.

The novel investigation will map the flow behavior over the parameter space of flow rate, fluid viscoelasticity, and particle loading. An award of $80K will come to Rutgers out of a total award of $456K, focusing on MRI imaging of concentrated suspensions with a polymeric suspending fluid, starting in Spring 2024 for a period of three years. The research is relevant to multiple applications in extrusion, fiber-reinforced polymer processing, inkjet printing, food processing, enhanced oil recovery and biomedical devices. More details can be found here: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2335195&HistoricalAwards=false