Pratap Vanka Honored by ASME for Fluids Engineering Paper

NEW YORK, June 26, 2012 – Pratap Vanka, Ph.D., a resident of Champaign, Ill., and professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will be honored by ASME for the paper titled “Computational Fluid Dynamics on Graphics Processing Units.”  He will receive the Freeman Scholar Award.

Established in 1926 and given biennially, the Freeman Scholar Award is bestowed upon a person with wide experience in fluids engineering.  The recipient is expected to review a coherent topic in his or her specialty, including a comprehensive statement of the state of the art, and suggest future research needs.  The award will be presented to Dr. Vanka during theFluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting, which is being held in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, July 8 through 12.

Vanka has been an active researcher of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for 35 years.  Beginning with his doctoral research on flow and heat transfer in helical coils, he has studied a diverse set of flow problems that have included two-phase flow in steam generators, liquid sodium flow in fast breeder reactors, magnetohydrodynamic power generation, ramjet combustors and ducted rockets, short take-off and vertical landing aircraft, jets in cross flow and continuous casting of steel, to name a few.

Among his contributions was the detailed characterization of the 3-D flow, temperature and species fields to study issues such as combustion efficiency, hot gas intake, mixing efficiency, etc.  His research also included developing efficient solvers and implementing them on advanced parallel computers.  One of his major contributions has been a coupled multigrid flow solver that has significantly accelerated the convergence of solutions for Navier-Stokes equations.  In addition, he has applied large eddy simulations to study secondary flows and particle transport in square ducts.  Recently he has implemented several numerical algorithms on graphics processing units, including the lattice Boltzmann method, molecular dynamics and the finite volume method.

In his current position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Vanka teaches CFD and thermal science courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and supervises graduate students.  Prior to joining the university’s faculty in 1989, he was a scientist (1979-88) at Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois.

Vanka has authored/co-authored more than 80 refereed journal publications and nearly 60 refereed papers presented at conferences.

A Fellow of ASME, Vanka is a member of the ASME Fluid Engineering Division’s Fluid Mechanics, Multiphase Flow and Computational Fluid Dynamics Technical committees. 

He has chaired/organized several forums and sessions. Previously he served as chair of the Computational Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee and was an associate editor of the Journal of Fluids Engineering and the Journal of Heat Transfer. 

Vanka earned three degrees in mechanical engineering: his bachelor’s degree at Banaras Hindu University, India, in 1968; his master’s degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1970; and his Ph.D. at Imperial College, University of London in 1975. In 1985, he earned a master’s degree in business at the University of Chicago.

About ASME: ASME helps the global engineering community develop solutions to real world challenges. Founded in 1880 as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME is a not-for-profit professional organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing and skill development across all engineering disciplines, while promoting the vital role of the engineer in society. ASME codes and standards, publications, conferences, continuing education and professional development programs provide a foundation for advancing technical knowledge and a safer world.