When it comes to research in areas like complex wakes and bluff body aerodynamics, Barbara L. da Silva, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, is not only making breakthroughs with her impactful work, but she's also become a trailblazer in the process.
"I do not know many women that work in this field. It's definitely few and far between," says da Silva. “I would like to be able to inspire women to join engineering programs and higher education in general because we need more women in research. That's something I care about.”
Her research focuses primarily on the fundamentals of wakes, vortices and the forces they cause on “bluff” or “blunt” bodies, around which the air or the water does not flow smoothly. She studies how these forces are exerted and how the vortices interact with bluff bodies, which can be found in both natural and engineered environments. Examples of bluff bodies can include any obstacle or structure, such as a person, a tree, a building, or an airplane, to name a few.
“Imagine a building, and you have the wind coming toward it,” she says. “As it hits the building, some of the wind will stop, and its energy will be transformed into a force that is applied to it. Some of the wind gets deflected by the building and rolls up around it, forming vortices in a region behind the building that we call a wake. My research is studying this wake, and these vortices formed around obstacles that could be a building in my example, but more generally, any bluff body.”
Additionally, her techniques can also be used with flows produced by water, and any kind of liquid or gas. She notes how she’s using both experimental and computational methods to gather a comprehensive picture of the flow field that occurs around these bodies. “I work with cylinders and square prisms, and I vary, for example, the slenderness of the body and the flow conditions,” says da Silva. “Then, I study the how the flow and the loads on these structures are affected by these changes.”
Her work has been revolutionary in understanding the flow around short structures, like low-rise buildings, which supports the advancement of wind turbine technology and other alternative energy generation methods like rooftop wind energy harvesters. These products, which are still in development, can be installed on the rooftops of large buildings, taking advantage of flow separation and acceleration. Alternatively, her work has the potential to enhance the function of electronic device components, promoting mixing and improving heat transfer within these devices.
In the future, she sees more machine learning being used in bluff body aerodynamics, which is already underway. She also predicts an increase in bio-inspired applications that leverage solutions found in biological evolution influenced by the natural environment.
While discussing her graduate studies trajectory, which began at the University of Blumenau in her home country of Brazil and continued to the completion of her PhD at the University of Saskatchewan, da Silva is grateful for the many talented professors who guided her along the way. In Brazil, where she describes her research group as being incredibly collaborative, she explains how it's commonplace for a group of professors to work with the students they supervise on specific projects as a large team. "You know how they say it takes a village to raise a child? In my university at Brazil, it takes a department to raise a graduate student," says da Silva.
While in Canada, her research opportunities were just as instrumental when working with her former PhD supervisor, David Sumner at the University of Saskatchewan. "His teaching style was very student-focused, and I feel like I had a great experience coming out of my PhD. He's someone who has inspired me very much," says da Silva.
Set to begin teaching her first course in the winter of 2025, da Silva looks forward to fostering a collaborative environment that promotes student-centered learning, like she experienced with Sumner.
"It's very important in my teaching to promote a psychologically safe environment so that students feel free to ask questions and make mistakes. I strongly believe that you need to make mistakes to be able to learn."
This article is relevant to the following Strategic Actions as defined in the Strategic Plan:
