:::Research

My research interests can be divided into two main categories: analytical and numerical methods. Both are focused on research in fundamental fluid dynamics, and most recently combustion.

My thrust in analytical methods dates back to high school where we were introduced to those lovely calculus proofs, set theory and stuff like that. However, with an engineering education that stressed mostly on solving nearly intractable problems with analytics, much of the emphasis on exact methods was lost. Fortunately, teaming up with Professor Joseph Majdalani of the University of Tennessee Space Institute has revived this utopian research direction. The use of perturbation methods for the solution of nonlinear PDEs and ODEs was a fair enough tradeoff for a mostly engineering career. In two words, our research is focused on asymptotic solutions of the Navier-Stokes (and related) equations. Of course, we don't do this in a general scenario as boundary conditions vary from problem to another. Rather, we tackle one problem at a time

In numerics, the world of computational fluid dynamics was my most appreciated discovery. With a passion for programming and fluid dynamics, CFD was definitely an area of interest. In my undergraduate studies, I was introduced to the problem of turbulence and our inability to fully apprehend or simulate the infinitude of structures inherent in a turbulent flow. In this respect, I ventured into sophisticated turbulence models (actually easier to comprehend) such as Large Eddy Simulation. All of this works was done under the supervision of Dr. Michel El Hayek at Notre Dame University in Lebanon.
My graduate research started at the American University of Beirut with Professor Marwan Darwish, an exquisite programmer! With him introducing me to the "real" computer world with Unix and the Macintosh as well as C ,C++, and Objective-C, I was quickly attracted by parallel computing, a topic I had no idea about, and one that I dreaded so much when I was browsing my undergraduate CFD book. We ended up with a massive parallelization for a finite volume unstructured solver in a distributed memory environment!

:::Selected Publications

Journal Articles

2006
1. Saad, T., Sams, O. C. and Majdalani, J., “Rotational Flow in Tapered Slab Rocket Motors,” Physics of Fluids, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2006.
2. Sams, O. C., Majdalani, J. and Saad, T., “Mean Flow Approximations for Solid Rocket Motors with Tapered Walls,” Journal of Propulsion and Power, accepted and galley proofs completed.

Conference Proceedings

2006
1. Darwish, M.S., Saad, T. and Hamdan, Z., “A High Scalability Parallel Algebraic Multigrid Solver,” ECCOMAS CFD Conference, Egmond Aan Zee, Netherlands, September 5-8, 2006.
2. Darwish, M.S., Saad, T., “A High Scalability Parallel Algebraic Multigrid Solver,” 4th ICCFD Conference, Ghent, Belgium, July 10-14, 2006.

2005
3. Saad, Y.T., “Implementation and Performance Analysis of a Parallel Algebraic Multigrid Solver,” 4th FEA Student Conference, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, May 26-27, 2005.