Past Event

Lecture Synopsis

Aspects of fluid dynamics appear often in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks: sketches of water flow, plans for flying machines, studies of bird flight. He seemed fascinated by the eddying movement of water and designed ingenious experiments to try and understand the causes of these complex motions. He lacked the advanced mathematical tools required to study this subject properly, his observational powers, however, allowed him to make some exceptionally perceptive remarks that foreshadow techniques used today, both in the experimental and the theoretical analysis of flow problems, observations illustrated by striking drawings and sketches. In this talk, some of Leonardo’s reflections on turbulence will be discussed, vis a vis the present understanding of this captivating but baffling subject, perhaps the last unsolved problem in classical physics.

Speaker Bio

Ugo Piomelli has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 1988. From 1987 to 2008 he was on the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland. In August 2008 he joined the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where he is the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Turbulence Simulation and Modelling, and the HPCVL-Sun Microsystems Chair in Computational Science and Engineering.

Professor Piomelli was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2015, of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2009, of the Institute of Physics (UK) in 2004 and of the American Physical Society in 2002. He was also elected Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2004. Since 2015, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Turbulence.

The John Adjeleian Annual Lecture

The annual John Adjeleian Lecture was established in 2003 to honour the late John Adjeleian, Emeritus Professor of Engineering at Carleton University, for his outstanding contributions to the university and to the profession of civil engineering. He was the founder of the firm Adjeleian Allen Rubeli Ltd., which has provided engineering services for over 3000 engineering projects including many known for their outstanding structural design, such as the Fathers of Confederation Memorial Building in Prince Edward Island, National Arts Centre in Ottawa, and the SkyDome (now Rogers Centre) in Toronto.

This year, the Adjeleian Lecture committee is proud to partner with the Carleton University Leonardo 2019 committee, formed to commemorate and honour the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death in 1519. The cross-faculty Leonardo 2019 committee has proposed a university-wide series of events honouring the life and work of da Vinci, including talks on the broad theme of Leonardo’s work, his life, thoughts, and impact into the modern era.