Research Interests:

Professor Gaonkar is a Fellow of the American Helicopter Society, and an Advocate Member of the American Wind Energy Association. He was an associate editor of the journal of the American Helicopter Society form January 1990 to May 2001, and the Editor-in-Chief from June 2001-May 2004. He received the FEEDS (Florida Engineering Education Delivery System) Exceptional Professor Award from the College of Engineering, FAU, for the fall semester of 1995 and the Professorial Excellence Program Award from FAU in Dec. 1996. He also received the Exemplary Service Award from the American Helicopter Society in May 2004. His work on the application of massively parallel and distributed computing to Rotorcraft Aeroelasticity is covered as a feature article in the spring 2002 (vol.13, no. 1) issue of "access", a publication of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). The current research addresses helicopter stability margins during aggressive maneuvers and wind turbine aeroelasticity in the following two areas: turbulence modeling and finite-state modeling of wake dynamics. Turbulence modeling focuses on large-diameter wind turbine (dia > 300 ft) with due consideration of vertical wind shear, temperature gradient and hydrodynamic instability. Finite-state modeling represents an approach of intermediate complexity in that it goes far beyond the momentum theory approach, and at the same time it is not as complex and computer intensive as the CFD approach. Specifically, this research addresses three-dimensional wake and includes the effects of tower shadow and turbine-to-turbine to interference.