The Fluid and Granular Mechanics group at the Chemical Engineering Department, IIT Bombay is a very active group with a diverse mix of faculty with expertise in experimentation, theory and simulations in a reasonably wide range of topics of fluid mechanical interest. The group seeks to maintain a balanced distribution among new and experienced faculty members, through continuous recruitment of new faculty. Current topics of interest to the group include suspension dynamics and LBM simulations, electro-hydrodynamics with applications to soft matter, gas-solid turbulent suspensions, polymer turbulence and low-order modelling, hydrodynamic stability, waves and interfacial instabilities, microfluidics, self-assembly and granular mechanics. While the thrust is typically on engineering applications, the approach has always remained strongly fundamental with emphasis on mathematical modelling, an area where significant inhouse expertise has been developed over several years. A wide range of experimental (rheometers, microscopes, high-speed cameras, laser lighting etc.) & computational facilities (computational clusters with several hundreds of cores of processors) exist with faculty members in the group and these are continuously utilized to conduct research and provide specialized training to students. In addition, the group engages in teaching a repertoire of core and specialized elective courses related to fluid mechanics with the aim of developing problem- solving skills among students at all levels - under-graduate, graduate and doctoral. Several of our students successfully get placed with industries engaged in core areas of chemical engineering. Those with a knack towards academia or research, often elect to pursue higher studies in Chemical Engineering. These include several masters & doctoral students who have gone to pursue higher degrees (Ph.D. or postdoctoral fellowships) at top universities around the world. Research conducted by the group is partly reflected through publications which consistently appear in reputed international journals such J. Fluid Mechanics, Phys. Rev. Lett, Physical Rev. Fluids, Soft Matter and Physics of Fluids in addition to several other fluid mechanics journals. As the group ponders the future, we wish to fortify our current capabilities by continually hiring promising faculty applicants with strong training and exemplary research records. The group also envisages pursuing research problems of mass societal impact and
where fluid mechanics may play a pivotal role. We foresee that these include industrial problems related to granular mechanics or turbulent suspensions, microfluidics with biological applications, problems of geophysical interest concerning waves in the ocean, and polymer turbulence among several others.
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