Overview

Our research interests center around the areas of fluid dynamics, rheology of complex fluids and interfacial phenomena. Specifically, we focus on the understanding, prediction and control of hydrodynamic instabilities that arise in the flow of simple and complex fluids, and in devising new strategies to manipulate instabilities towards many technological applications. We use tools from applied mathematics such as perturbation theory, asymptotic analysis, as well as computational techniques such as the spectral method to this end. For the first time, we have demonstrated that soft solid coatings could be potentially used to suppress a class of interfacial instabilities that occur in co-extrusion of polymers and film coating operations, without triggering any new instability in the system. We have also uncovered new instabilities in viscoelastic liquid flows adjacent to a deformable solid wall, which could be potentially exploited in improving mixing at small scales, such as in micro-fluidic devices. Our work on dewetting of viscoelastic liquids has shown, for the first time, the importance of incorporating inertial effects in the theory in order to obtain a correct description of the length and time scales of the instability. This prediction has important implications in pattern-formation applications.

Awards
  • INSA Young Scientist Medal,(2004)
  • INAE Young Engineer Award,(2006)
  • IIChE Golden Jubilee Young Achiever Award,(2007).
  • Associate, Indian Academy of Sciences ,(2004-2007)

Work Experience
  • Assistant Professor, Department Of Chemical Engg., IIT Kanpur, July 2002 - Dec 2007

Recent Publications
  • Gaurav and V. Shankar, Stability of pressure-driven flow in a deformable neo-Hookean channel, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, In Press (2010)

  • D. Bandyopadhyay, A. Sharma and V. Shankar, Electric-field - contact-force tunable patterns in slipping soft elastic films, European Physical Letters 89, 36002 (2010).

  • Gaurav and V. Shankar, Stability of fluid flow through deformable neo-Hookean tubes,Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 627, 291-322 (2009).

  • A. Jain and V. Shankar, Elastohydrodynamic suppression of free-surface instabilities in annular liquid film flow outside wires and inside tubes,Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research, 47, 6473-6485 (2008).

  • D. Bandopadhyay, A. Sharma and V. Shankar, Instabilities and pattern minaturization in confined and free-elastic viscous bilayers, Journal of Chemical Physics, 128, 154909 (12 pages) (2008).

  • A. Jain and V. Shankar, Instability suppression in viscoelastic film flows down an inclined plane lined with a deformable solid layer,Physical Review E, 76, 046314 (14 pages)(2007).

  • Gaurav and V. Shankar, Stability of gravity-driven free-surface flow past a deformable solid at zero & finite Reynolds number,Physics of Fluids, 19, 024105 (11 pages) (2007).