Want to join our team? The lab is always looking for self-motivated students interested in hands-on research.  E-mail Dr. Santhanakrishnan your current résumé and unofficial transcripts for consideration.

FACILITIES

Our labs are located at rooms 147 and 150 of the Advanced Technology Research Center (ATRC) building on the Stillwater campus of Oklahoma State University

  • Biological fluid mechanics lab (900 sq. ft.): This lab is dedicated for projects using physical models of living systems.  It houses three setups for studying: 1) cardiovascular flows, 2) flapping flight of tiny insects, and 3) metachronal swimming in crustaceans. Two x 5 foot long stainless steel workstations for table top experimental setups and a separate worktable for minor machining tasks.
  • Marine ‘wet-lab’ (300 sq. ft.): This lab is dedicated for housing and conducting flow visualization studies on marine organisms.  There are 5 marine aquarium tanks ranging from 12-55 gallons for housing and observation.  A custom-hatchery for harvesting brine shrimp larvae for feeding large zooplankton is available, along with refrigerator storage for eggs, reagents and water treatment chemicals. Multiple pumps, thermometers, cooling fans, submersible heaters, filters and wave controllers are available for use in aquarium setup and maintenance.  Several 55-gallon barrels are available for saltwater and distilled water storage purposes.  An unlimited distilled water line is available in the 2nd floor of ATRC building.

    • Recirculating low-speed flow tank: This saltwater flow tank is located in the marine wet lab space and consists of an optically clear test section measuring 1 ft x 1 ft and 8 ft in length. This facility is used for studies on pumping and feeding biomechanics of marine benthic invertebrates subject to low Reynolds number background flows ranging from 5 mm/s – 15 mm/s.

Shared Use

  • Recirculating low-speed water tunnel: This water tunnel can be used with either freshwater or saltwater, and has an optically clear test section measuring 0.3 m x 0.3 m in cross-section and 1 m in length.  Multiple sets of pulley drives can be used to achieve mean flow velocities ranging from 1 cm/s to 100 cm/s.
  • Open return wind tunnel: This open return wind tunnel has an optically clear test section measuring 3 ft x 3 ft and 7 ft in length.  A 125 hp centrifugal blower at the downstream end of the test section is used to provide air flows ranging from 1 m/s to 36 m/s. 
  • All our major computations are performed using the resources of Oklahoma State University High Performance Computing Center.
  • Fabrication and prototyping services are provided by the Fab-Lab at Oklahoma State University.

EQUIPMENT

Stereo Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) systems

  • 2 Phantom Miro 110 series high-speed cameras with 1 Megapixel CMOS sensor and 12 GB onboard memory (per camera), maximum frame rate of 1630 Hz at full resolution
  • Two 5.5 Megapixel sCMOS cameras (LaVision GmbH) with maximum frame rate of 50 Hz at full resolution for phase-locked and time-averaged PIV
  • 1 Nd:YLF High Repetition Rate Laser: single cavity diode-pumped solid-state, 527 nm, 30 mJ/pulse at 1 kHz repetition rate
  • 2 PIV data acquisition workstations: 2 x quad-core XEON processors, 12 GB RAM, 2 TB hard drive
  • DaVIS processing software (LaVision GmbH)

Pulsatile Pumps

  • Programmable piston pump (ViVitro Labs)
  • Harvard Apparatus pulsatile pump

Miscellaneous

  • Canon EOS 70D 20.2 MP & EOS 6D CMOS Digital SLR Cameras
  • Hemodynamics: ultrasonic flow meters (Transonic Systems, Inc.), absolute pressure transducers and signal conditioning module
  • National Instruments DAQ boards
  • Submersible pumps for flow loop and aquarium use
  • Precision gram load cells with 10 g capacity (Model GSO-10, Transducer Techniques LLC, Temecula, CA)
  • Network attached RAID server (15 TB) for backup and data sharing

Shared Use

  • 1 high-speed camera (LaVision GmbH) with 1 Megapixel CMOS sensor and 2 GB onboard memory, maximum frame rate of 1000 Hz at full resolution
  • 1 Continuous wave laser: diode-pumped solid-state, 1 W, 532 nm, connected to a high-speed laser scanner to obtain high-repetition rate up to 3 kHz
  • Nikon Eclipse TE2000-U inverted head epifluorescence microscope