Our Research Team and Advisors

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Dr. Shishir Pandya, Computational Fluid Dynamics

I work at the NASA Ames Research Center in the Advanced Computational Methods branch.

My background is in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). CFD is a method that scientists and engineers use to simulate the flow of air over aircraft wings, cars, or the flow of air and water around objects like sail boats with the aid of a computer. For this project, the team plans to do a CFD simulation that describes how the air flows around a tennis ball as it travels through the air.

I received my undergraduate and masters degrees at the University of California, Davis in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering and worked at NASA while I completed my Ph.D. in the area of CFD.

In the past I have been interested in the sport of tennis, but other than casually playing with friends, I have never really played tennis seriously. My favorite sports include volleyball and cricket - two sports where aerodynamics around a ball also play an important role. However, since becoming a part of the team and studying the aerodynamics of the tennis ball, I have begun learning and playing the sport of tennis with great interest.

My role in the project is to help generate a computer model of the tennis ball and aid with the aerodynamic analysis on a computer. For this, the team is determining how to model the fuzz on a tennis ball and looking at different methods we can use to simulate a spinning ball.