Bernd Rainer Noack is a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 scientist

Scientist

A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...

.
His research and teaching area is closed-loop

Control theory

Control theory is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and mathematics that deals with the behavior of dynamical systems. The desired output of a system is called the reference...

 flow control

Fluid dynamics

In physics, fluid dynamics is a sub-discipline of fluid mechanics that deals with fluid flow—the natural science of fluids in motion. It has several subdisciplines itself, including aerodynamics and hydrodynamics...

 for transport systems. Focus is placed on reduced-order modelling and nonlinear (attractor

Attractor

An attractor is a set towards which a dynamical system evolves over time. That is, points that get close enough to the attractor remain close even if slightly disturbed...

) control of shear flow

Shear flow

The term shear flow is used in solid mechanics as well as in fluid dynamics. Loosely speaking, shear flow is defined as:* the gradient of a shear stress force through the body ;...

s. Currently investigated configurations include wake

Wake

A wake is the region of recirculating flow immediately behind a moving or stationary solid body, caused by the flow of surrounding fluid around the body.-Fluid dynamics:...

s, mixing layers

Viscosity

Viscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid which is being deformed by either shear or tensile stress. In everyday terms , viscosity is "thickness" or "internal friction". Thus, water is "thin", having a lower viscosity, while honey is "thick", having a higher viscosity...

, jets

Nozzle

A nozzle is a device designed to control the direction or characteristics of a fluid flow as it exits an enclosed chamber or pipe via an orifice....

, combustor mixing

Combustor

A combustor is a component or area of a gas turbine, ramjet, or scramjet engine where combustion takes place. It is also known as a burner, combustion chamber or flame holder. In a gas turbine engine, the combustor or combustion chamber is fed high pressure air by the compression system. The...

 and aerodynamic flows around cars and airplanes

Wake turbulence

Wake turbulence is turbulence that forms behind an aircraft as it passes through the air. This turbulence includes various components, the most important of which are wing vorticies and jetwash. Jetwash refers simply to the rapidly moving gases expelled from a jet engine; it is extremely turbulent,...

. Another main area
are thermodynamic formalisms

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium. Most systems found in nature are not in thermodynamic equilibrium; for they are changing or can be triggered to change over time, and are continuously and discontinuously...

 for turbulence modeling.

Life

He received his degree a diplom physicist from the Georg-August-University, Göttingen, in 1989. He stayed on to receive his physics doctorate in 1992 under Helmut Eckelmann. In the sequel, he had positions at the Max-Planck-Institut für Strömungsforschung, Göttingen

Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization

The Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-organisation in Göttingen, Germany, is a research institute for investigations of complex non-equilibrium systems, particularly in physics and biology....

, the German Aerospace Center, Göttingen

German Aerospace Center

The German Aerospace Center is the national centre for aerospace, energy and transportation research of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has multiple locations throughout Germany. Its headquarters are located in Cologne. It is engaged in a wide range of research and development projects in...

, the Göttingen University, and the United Technologies Research Center (East Hartford, CT, USA)

United Technologies Corporation

United Technologies Corporation is an American multinational conglomerate headquartered in the United Technologies Building in Hartford, Connecticut...

 before he joined the Berlin Institute of Technology

Technical University of Berlin

The Technische Universität Berlin is a research university located in Berlin, Germany. Translating the name into English is discouraged by the university, however paraphrasing as Berlin Institute of Technology is recommended by the university if necessary .The TU Berlin was founded...

. There, Professor Noack has headed the group "Reduced-Order Modelling for Flow Control" at the School V "Transport and Machine Systems". Currently, he is Director of Research CNRS at Institut Pprime, Poitiers, France.

Scientific Work

At the center of Noack's scientific investigations is the grand challenge of developing consistent modeling frameworks, enabling the simplest possible, physically meaningful and accurate representations of phenomena, as complex as fluid dynamics systems can be. Within that wide context, his work has focused primarily on developing the theoretical foundations for models and modeling tools, building on the Galerkin method

Galerkin method

In mathematics, in the area of numerical analysis, Galerkin methods are a class of methods for converting a continuous operator problem to a discrete problem. In principle, it is the equivalent of applying the method of variation of parameters to a function space, by converting the equation to a...

 approach, originally proposed by Boris Galerkin

Boris Galerkin

Boris Grigoryevich Galerkin , born in Polozk, Belarus, Russian Empire was a Russian/Soviet mathematician and an engineer.-Early days:Galerkin was born on in Polotsk, Russian Empire, now part of Belarus. His parents owned a house in the town, but the homecraft they made did not bring enough money,...

. A guiding principle, underlying his work is the premise that in order to generate a low order model of a complex physical phenomenon, it is necessary to first identify the simplest representation of the dominant physical principles, governing that phenomenon. To do so, Noack integrated ideas and methods across a wide breadth of approaches and lately, across disciplines. One notable example is the integration of the efficiency of the proper orthogonal decomposition the Galerkin of mean field theory

Mean field theory

Mean field theory is a method to analyse physical systems with multiple bodies. A many-body system with interactions is generally very difficult to solve exactly, except for extremely simple cases . The n-body system is replaced by a 1-body problem with a chosen good external field...

, early ideas of Lev Davidovich Landau and their later refinement by J. T. Stuart and J. Watson. A more recent example is the connection between ideas in finite time non-equilibrium thermodynamics

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium. Most systems found in nature are not in thermodynamic equilibrium; for they are changing or can be triggered to change over time, and are continuously and discontinuously...

 (FTT) and Galerkin models.

In addition to his primary theoretical work on Galerkin models, Bernd Noack's diverse research activities include theoretical studies in Lagrangian vortex

Vortex

A vortex is a spinning, often turbulent,flow of fluid. Any spiral motion with closed streamlines is vortex flow. The motion of the fluid swirling rapidly around a center is called a vortex...

 models, numerical methods in computational fluid dynamics

Computational fluid dynamics

Computational fluid dynamics, usually abbreviated as CFD, is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate the interaction of liquids and gases with...

, and innovative approaches to flow visualization

Flow visualization

Flow visualization in fluid dynamics is used to make the flow patterns visible, in order to get a qualitative or quantitative information on them.- Overview :...

, to name a few examples. This breadth builds on a network of cross disciplinary collaborations, in Poitiers, Berlin and internationally.