After receiving his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1987 from the University of Missouri-Columbia, Kenneth Jansen went on to graduate school at Stanford University where he earned an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Aeronautical Engineering in 1993 under an Office of Naval Research Fellowship. He then joined the Center for Turbulence Research, a joint NASA-Stanford program, where he was awarded a three year post-doctoral research fellowship. In August, 1996 he became a member of the Rensselaer faculty. In January, 2010 he joined the Faculty of University of Colorado Boulder in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences

Research Interests and Activities Major Interests: Computational mechanics with emphasis on fluid dynamics. Turbulence theory, simulation, and modeling. Parallel computing.

The motivation of Jansen's research is to provide engineers with a better predictive capability for fluid dynamics problems, especially those where turbulence plays an non-negligible role. To this end, his research, at the most applied level, seeks to develop simple models which describe the net effect or average of the turbulence upon the mean flow equations. These models, when combined with a fully unstructured-grid finite element method, allow engineers to model arbitrarily complex flow problems. Unfortunately, these models are not yet able to describe all turbulent flows. Therefore, other forms of simulating turbulence are also pursued. These forms are: 1) Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) where the large scale motions of the turbulence are resolved in the computation leaving only the fine scale motions to be modeled, 2) Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) where all of the turbulent motions are resolved in the computational model. These alternate forms are useful both to develop a more basic understanding of the theory of turbulence and to help improve the averaged models used by engineers.  
 

Publications and Presentations

 CV as of February 2019

 Active Sponsored Research as of February 2019