Daniel Floryan, Kalsi Assistant Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, has been selected for the 2025 Young Investigator Program Award by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
His research proposal, “Breaking Energy Efficiency Limits in Unsteady Wall-Bounded Flows,” was chosen from more than 150 proposals. The total award amount is $450,000, spanning three years.
When airplanes fly through air, they expend tremendous energy cutting through the friction of the air. There is a long-standing interest in manipulating the airflow close to the airplane to reduce the required energy. Unfortunately, despite devoted research efforts to it over the years, net energy savings have plateaued around 10 percent.
“Our ability to surpass this level of energy savings is ultimately limited by energy bounds that derive from the governing dynamics of fluid flows,” Floryan said. “We seek to develop a new class of flow control strategies that can break the established energy savings limits. This effort is guided by our theory that suggests that multi-modal control has great potential for energy savings.”
Once the new flow control strategies have been developed, his research will attempt to combine newly understood physical mechanisms with methods from optimal control theory to refine control strategies, resulting in a step-change in the energy-savings capabilities of flow control.
The Air Force Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) supports early in career scientists and engineers showing exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research. The program objective is to foster creative basic research in science and engineering, enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators, and increase opportunities for the young investigator to recognize the Air Force and Space Force mission and related challenges in science and engineering.
Floryan joined the faculty of the Cullen College of Engineering in 2021. He earned his doctorate in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Princeton. For more information about his lab and research, visit his group’s webpage.