Dhiraj Kumar

Dr. Dhiraj has a strong academic background and expertise in experimental Aerodynamics and Fluid Mechanics. He completed his master's and PhD degrees in Aerospace engineering from IIT Kanpur. His core area of research is Experimental Aerodynamics and he has significant experience working on sponsored research and consultancy projects related to aerodynamics and wind tunnel testing.

Before joining UPES, Dr. Dhiraj was working as a Senior Project Engineer at IIT Kanpur. He has more than two years of experience working as a Research Fellow at IIT Kanpur. During this period, he worked on several industrial and sponsored research projects on aerodynamic testing of small-scale models of air vehicles and various engineering structures such as high-rise buildings, smoke stacks, cooling towers, and high railway bridges subjected to dynamic wind loads and vibration. Dr. Dhiraj has significant experience working with PIV, hotwire measurement, pressure measurement, strain and force measurements, infrared thermography, flow visualization, and high-speed imaging. He also has expertise in LabVIEW programming and data acquisition systems.

His research interests include Experimental Aerodynamics, Experimental Fluid Mechanics, Fluid-Structure Interaction, Renewable Energy Harvesting and Flow control.

Dr. Kumar guides and motivates students to grasp and internalize the core concepts of their subject. His primary emphasis lies in nurturing the students' problem-solving acumen and equipping them with the ability to approach and resolve intricate engineering challenges. Additionally, he administers assignments and tutorial exercises that are closely aligned with real-world engineering applications.

Dr. Dhiraj has taught several courses at UPES, such as Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Machines, Mechanics of Materials, Workshop Practices Lab, Fluid Mechanics Lab, Advanced Fluid Mechanics and Aerodynamics, and Fluid Flow for Food Technology.

He received a Graduate Research Fellowship for his doctoral degree at IIT Kanpur. He was ranked in the top 1% among 81,175 test-takers in India in GATE (ME) 2011.

Dr. Dhiraj has been working on experimental aerodynamics and fluid mechanics. His research work has been focused on flow-induced vibration (fluid-structure interaction) and vibration control. At present, he is also working on renewable energy harvesting, such as energy harvesting from the wind and water current, and flow control over a wing. He has publications on flow-induced oscillations in reputed international journals.

dhiraj.kumar@ddn.upes.ac.in