Effect of gaps and bumps on boundary layer transition

Transition to turbulence is challenging research with importance to both low and high speed flight vehicle. This seminar will focus on the long standing topic of the effect of surface irregularities on transition, including the long researched problem of bumps and the much less investigated gaps. Despite having been investigated for almost a century, there are still many open questions about the effect of bumps on transition. The seminar will include low-speed low-turbulence wind tunnel experiments, direct numerical simulations, local/global instability analysis, advanced signal processing. The talk will cover receptivity, interaction with TS waves and by pass transition. Most of the seminar will focus on the subsonic regime, but applications to supersonic regime will also be covered.

Prof. Marcello A. Faraco de Medeiros holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1987), a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1990), and a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Cambridge (1996). He is a faculty member of the University of São Paulo since 2002, and was visiting professor at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (2012-2013), at the University of Liverpool (2018-2019) and at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology (2025). He has experience in Aerospace Engineering, with emphasis on Aerodynamics, working primarily on the following topics: hydrodynamic instability, boundary layers, transition, turbulence, and aeroacoustics. Among the main applications were natural transition in boundary layers and the effect of surface imperfections, including receptivity, Tollmien-Schlichting waves and by-pass transition; and slat and cavity noise. He uses experiments, theory and numerical simulations and has designed low turbulence wind tunnels and developed codes for numerical simulations, linear stability analysis and beamforming. He collaborated with the industrial section including Boeing, SAAB, American Air Force, Embraer and Petrobras, among others. He has received a number of awards (including Embraer prize of best thesis), represents Brazil in a number of organizations (among them, the IUTAM), and gave seminars in many institutions and events.