
Researcher biography
Dr Anand Veeraragavan joined the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering as a mechanical engineering lecturer in 2012.
Anand Veeraragavan graduated with a B.Tech in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras) in 2002. He obtained his MS (2006) and PhD (2009) degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland. His PhD research focused on understanding flame stabilization in microscale combustors by developing a non-intrusive diagnostic technique based on FT-IR spectroscopy to make temperature measurements inside a silicon walled combustor. He also created a detailed analytical model that accounted for conjugate heat transfer to predict flame speeds in a channel.
After his research appointment on solar energy as a postdoctoral associate in the Device Research Lab at MIT, he worked as a combustion technologist for GE Energy in the US. At GE, he worked primarily on designing the next generation, land based, heavy duty, gas turbine engine combustors focusing on cost, operability, reliability and emissions and also completed his lean Six Sigma Greenbelt certification at GE.
His research interests include:
- Renewable and non-renewable energy systems (coal/gas combustion, geothermal and solar energy) for power generation
- Hypersonics propulsion/combustion
- Simple analytical modelling of fundamental processes in heat transfer
- Optical diagnostics using FT-IR, far IR and other techniques to make temperature and flow measurements
- Solar thermal and solar photovoltaic technology development
- HVAC systems design and optimization