Andrew Dickerson
University of Tennessee-Knoxville, TN·Engineering
When rain lands on a leaf or a small flexible wing, the water and the surface push on each other: the surface bends and vibrates, and the drop slides, sloshes or flies off. Understanding this two-way interaction matters for living things, such as pine trees whose needles must shed water to keep breathing pores clear, and for engineered surfaces that need to clean themselves.
- Fields
Engineering
Physics
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
fluid-structure interaction
drop impact
pine needles
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Measure how pine needle elasticity, wettability, surface profile, impact geometry and vibration each control how much rainwater a needle retains, using focused laboratory drop-impact experiments.
- Compare water-shedding traits across Pinus species with a phylogenetic comparative approach, which uses the family tree of pines, to reveal how needle traits vary with environmental conditions.
- Use experimental and phylogenetic results as inputs to predictive models with multivariable regression to map optimums, trade-offs and limits in pine needle form beyond the species measured.
- Characterize how a drop sloshes, slides and ejects from a vibrating flexible cantilever beam, using high-speed videography and precisely controlled vibratory input across a range of bending and acceleration.
- Extend cantilever and elastica beam theory with fluid inertia forces and couple fluid and solid equations numerically to find the most effective vibration strategy for removing liquid from flexible surfaces.
More about the research
Both projects combine laboratory experiments with physical theory and modeling to explain how flexible structures get rid of liquid.
Why it matters
Pine trees supply most US lumber and anchor many ecosystems, so knowing how their needles handle rainfall could help forest industries and conservation planners anticipate how pines cope with a changing climate. Separately, rules for vibration-driven self-cleaning could help small flying robots and surfaces in food preparation and healthcare shed droplets, moisture, chemicals and biofilm-forming contaminants without manual cleaning.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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Samik Bhattacharya
University of Central Florida, FL·Engineering
Measure how rapid pitch-up motions of the wing and tail change lift and drag on 3D-printed bird models near the ground, using a force sensor to capture instantaneous forces during simulated takeoff and landing.
The school
University of Tennessee-Knoxville: 16 labs on PI Pages, $387M a year on research, 426 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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