Welcome to the Unsteady Fluid Mechanics & Acoustics Laboratory!

The unsteady fluid mechanics and acoustics laboratory at BU has a long history.  In the 1970’s when the ME department was still young, researchers developed one of the first boundary element formulations for aeroelasticity and acoustics associated with helicopter rotors for NASA.  Today the tradition is carried on by Professor Grace and her graduate students who research a variety of interesting and important problems in the field.

Check out the research tab for a list of active and past projects.

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In the summer of 2022, Professor Grace organized a NASA Downlink event at BU during which 400 middle and high school students + 400 BU affiliated people connected with BU alumni astronaut Bob Hines while he was on the International Space Station. The Downlink event was livestreamed and can still be viewed by clicking the livestream button at www.bu.edu/spacelive.

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EK210 – Introduction to Design : college-wide sophomore course Professor Grace coordinates. End of semester video collection showing some of the projects.  About 17 minutes long. Click on the picture to watch.

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COVID changed spring classes in 2020.  The EK131 Freshman module: Aerodynamics of Gliders brought out some real ingenuity in the students.  This youtube video shows the results of their efforts.

I started a face-shield making project in late March of 2020.  300+ have been donated to area long term care facilities.  A group is now involved to provide shields for Boston Medical Center.  Volunteers assemble shields from a kit of material supplied by BU EPIC.  The assembly process is shown in this youtube video.

Catherine Stone from Hebrew Senior Life wearing one of the original face shield designs 

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A past student project for the Mechanics of Materials course featured Professor Grace.  Watch it by clicking the picture.

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A past comment from a graduate student completing the ME702 course offered by Professor Grace this semester: “I really enjoyed the course and learned a lot from taking it that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I will definitely be letting other people in my research group know about it in case they are interested in the future.”

Projects from the ME702 class that investigated basic flows using OpenFOAM are available here. 

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An old project related to biokinematic sensing was fun and it highlights my hockey playing sons.  My collaborators were Richard West in Computer Science and Cara Lewis in Physical Therapy & Athletic Training.  A short article about the endeavor is here. The description of the project is here.

Some related things on past wearable fun projects I tried are described on this page. __________________________________________________________________________________

As a “public service” I commentated my sons’s high school hockey play off games for my town’s public media site (MA Div. I State co(vid)-champions 2020).  Semi’s, Final’s. Every year since, I have organized and been the videographer for Belmont Medias livestreams of the Belmont High School home hockey games as well as some soccer and lacrosse games. Was appointed to the Belmont Media Board 3/2024. Received volunteer of the year award 3/2024.