Zhaojing Xu (third-year doctoral student, Department of Modern Mechanical Engineering)
1. Destination:
Rice University, Houston, Texas, U.S.A.
2. Period of stay:
August 23, 2023~November 23, 2023
3. Purpose:
To extend the research regarding fluid dynamics of turbochargers and cars and to attend the course given by Professor Tayfun Tezduyar.
Lovett Hall, Rice University
4. Education and research activity at the destination:
There were five of us from Professor Kenji Takizawa’s lab who visited Rice. The other four were Yasutoshi Taniguchi, Takahiro Nakamura, Yuki Hoshi, and Wataru Fukuda. The course we took was “Computational Fluid Mechanics” given by Professor Tezduyar at Rice. I had previously taken his course at Waseda, online due to COVID pandemic. In America, the situation was different because it was a face-to-face course and held in an American class environment. The course is a very understandable step-to-step intro to computational methods in fluid dynamics. It is also very inspiring to see Professor Tezduyar interacting with students from Rice, who are delightful and very active during the class.
Besides that, I spent most of my time in Professor Tezduyar’s lab in Ryon building. While there, I really dug deep into my research and learned a number of strategies for solving my problems. These problems include the divergence of the computation when I have a spinning structure and mesh interfacing with a fixed mesh, and the meshing challenges in isogeometric analysis.
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- Everyday life in the Lab in Ryon building
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- Saturn V rocket at the Houston Space Center
5. Life in Houston:
First and foremost, you can’t talk about life without food, while Texas is kind of the holy grail of barbeque. Life in the United States is getting more and more expensive and, unfortunately, this holds true for barbeque restaurants. We didn’t want to miss this potentially once-in-a-life-time opportunity, so, we tried several barbeque restaurants. They are, of course, marvelous and very different from Japanese Yakiniku, with meat cooked just right, proper seasoning, and all those great side dishes to pair it with. Mexican food is also popular in Houston. This includes some of the best dishes in the world: tacos, quesadillas, and more. You can really feel the diversity of the food in the United States. It is a place where you can get all the foods from around the world. We even tried Japanese food, and it was surprisingly decent.
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- Figure 1 Texas barbeque with three sides of choice and bread
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- Figure 2 Texas signature American burger
We also visited different museums including the famous Houston Space Center, experienced student life at Rice, and went on a city walk in Houston. Everywhere we feel the diversity and vigor of this city.
For everyday life, we had a core time from 8:00 to 17:00. Almost everyday we worked longer than that, but it felt good to start the day’s work in the morning and have a regular routine (except when it was raining heavily). During weekends when we had free time, we explored the city quite a lot, exploring many restaurants, biking, shopping and even gold digging in antique shops. They are all great memories.
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- The Houston METRORail we took every weekday to school
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- Graffiti art in downtown Houston
6. Other comments:
The first thing I want to say is I would like to thank the Top Global University (TGU) Project for giving me this opportunity to study aboard for three months. I would also like to thank Professor Takizawa, Dr. Takashi Kuraishi from Professor Tezduyar’s lab, and Professor Tezduyar, not only for their research guidance but also for their help on life in Houston, settling at Rice, travel issues, and more.
I would also like to thank all the other members from Professor Tezduyar’s lab, Eli Case, Noah Pritchard, and Zhaoyu Cheng. It was nice not just working with them, but also making friends and spending the precious time after work together. My special thanks to Eli who gave me very straightforward explanations on isogemetric analysis.
Finally, I would like to thank Ms. Yukari Ishizaki, Ms. Sachiko Sugimoto, and Ms. Bronwen Seidel at Rice for their help in dealing with all the visa and travel issues, and my apologies for all the burden.
Our group photo with Professor Tezduyar, Dr. Kuraishi, Noah, Eli, and Zhaoyu
