About

Daniel J. Bodony is a Professor at The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on fluid-material coupling in high-enthalpy flows, high-enthalpy flows, jet noise reduction, data-driven model reduction and control, computational fluid dynamics, compressible turbulence, and fluid-thermal-structure interaction including aeroelasticity and aerothermoelasticity. His work also encompasses aeroacoustics, flow stability and control, and fluid mechanics of compressible fluids. He holds a Ph.D. in Aeronautics & Astronautics from Stanford University, obtained in 2005, with a thesis on aeroacoustic prediction of turbulent free-shear flows. He also earned an M.S. and B.S. in Aeronautics & Astronautics from Purdue University in 1999 and 1997, respectively. Dr. Bodony has held multiple academic positions, including Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, Associate Dean for Graduate, Professional, and Online Programs, and Blue Waters Professor of Aerospace Engineering. He is affiliated with several research institutes and centers, including the Materials Research Lab, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and the Mechanical Science and Engineering department. His research contributions include applications and results in jet noise, data-driven unsteady aerodynamic modeling, control of liquid-gas flows, and stability analysis of compressible boundary layer flows. He has authored chapters in books and numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, with research interests spanning aeroacoustics, aeroelasticity, combustion and propulsion, flow control, and hypersonics, among others.

Research topics

• Mechanics
• Engineering
• Physics
• Computer Science
• Aerospace engineering
• Materials science
• Structural engineering
• Computational physics
• Composite material
• Computational science
• Mechanical engineering
• Acoustics
• Thermodynamics
• Optics
• Nuclear physics
• Environmental science

Selected publications

• Petrov–Galerkin model reduction for collisional–radiative argon plasma

  Physics of Plasmas · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Accurate simulation of nonequilibrium plasmas, essential in hypersonic reentry, fusion energy, and astrophysical flows, relies on state-specific collisional–radiative (CR) kinetic models but often comes with prohibitive computational cost. While traditional approaches reduce this burden through empirical or physics-based simplifications, they frequently compromise accuracy in strongly nonequilibrium regimes. To address these limitations, we develop a Petrov–Galerkin reduced-order model (ROM) for CR argon plasma based on oblique projections that optimally balance the covariance of full-order state trajectories with that of the system's output sensitivities. This construction ensures that the ROM captures both the dominant energetic modes and the directions most relevant to input–output behavior. After offline training in a zero-dimensional setting using nonlinear forward and adjoint simulations, the ROM is coupled to a finite-volume solver and applied to one- (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) ionizing shock-tube problems. The ROM achieves a 3× reduction in state dimension and more than one order of magnitude savings in floating-point operations, while maintaining errors below 1% for macroscopic quantities. In both 1D and 2D, it robustly reproduces complex unsteady plasma flow features, including periodic fluctuations, electron avalanches, triple points, and cellular ionization patterns. This stands in contrast to standard ROM strategies, which become unstable or inaccurate under these challenging conditions. These results demonstrate the potential of the proposed model reduction strategy to enable high-fidelity simulation of reactive plasma flows at reduced computational cost, offering new capabilities for exploring high-speed fluid systems governed by coupled transport, wave propagation, and kinetic nonequilibrium.

  PublisherDOI

• From Coils to Surface Recession: Fully Coupled Simulation of Ablation in ICP Wind Tunnels

  ArXiv.org · 2026-02-17

  articleOpen access

  This work presents a fully coupled, multiphysics computational framework for predicting the thermo-chemical material response of thermal protection systems in inductively coupled plasma (ICP) wind tunnels. The framework integrates a high-fidelity Navier-Stokes plasma solver, an electromagnetic field solver, and a discontinuous-Galerkin material response solver using a partitioned coupling strategy. This enables an ab initio, end-to-end simulation of the 350 kW Plasmatron X facility at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), including plasma generation, electromagnetic heating, near-wall thermochemistry, and time-accurate material ablation. The model captures key ICP physics such as vortex-mode recirculation, Joule-heating-driven plasma formation, and Lorentz-force-induced flow confinement, and accurately predicts the transition from subsonic to supersonic jet behavior at low pressures. Validation against cold-wall calorimetry and graphite ablation experiments shows that predicted stagnation-point heat fluxes fall well within experimental uncertainty, while fully coupled simulations accurately reproduce measured stagnation temperature histories and recession rates with errors below 12% and 10%, respectively. Remaining discrepancies during early transient heating are attributed to uncertainties in power-coupling efficiency, equilibrium ablation modeling, and material property datasets. Overall, the framework demonstrates strong predictive capability for ICP wind tunnel environments and provides a foundation for improved design, interpretation, and planning of hypersonic material testing campaigns.

  PublisherOA PDF

• GasNiTROM: Model Reduction via Non-Intrusive Optimization of Oblique Projection Operators and Guaranteed-Stable Latent-Space Dynamics

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2026-03-22

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Non-intrusive reduced-order modeling techniques are necessary for systems that are simulated using black-box solvers or known only from data. For systems exhibiting large transients and operating far away from equilibria, current non-intrusive models often exhibit poor forecasting accuracy and can even be unstable in infinite or finite time. Recent developments have addressed the stability issue by seeking structure-preserving latent-space architectures when reducing Hamiltonian or Lagrangian full-order dynamics, or by enforcing global stability via Lyapunov-informed parameterizations in the latent space. However, such developments do not necessarily improve the forecasting accuracy of the resulting models, since these formulations achieve dimensionality reduction using orthogonal projections that accidentally truncate dynamically-important states. In this paper, we address both issues by introducing a non-intrusive framework designed to simultaneously identify globally-asymptotically-stable latent-space dynamics, and oblique projection operators capable of capturing the sensitivity mechanisms of the system. In particular, given a Lyapunov-based parameterization of the latent-space tensors, and a matrix-manifold parameterization of the oblique projection operators, we fit a model against high-fidelity training trajectories. Furthermore, we show that the gradient of the objective function can be written in closed form using adjoint-based backpropagation in the latent space, eliminating the need for automatic differentiation. We compare our formulation with state-of-the-art methods on a three-dimensional system of ordinary differential equations, and a two-dimensional lid-driven cavity flow at Reynolds number Re=8300. We demonstrate that our models are not only globally asymptotically stable (as expected by construction), but they are also significantly more accurate.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Resolvent analysis of shock-laden flows

  Journal of Fluid Mechanics · 2026-03-23

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We present a semi-analytic investigation of the resolvent operator, and its associated forcing and response modes for quasi-one-dimensional shock-laden flows. Using a Green’s function approach, we derive resolvent solutions for isentropic (subsonic and supersonic) and transonic flows with shocks in converging–diverging nozzles of arbitrary geometry. Our analysis demonstrates that shock-induced heightened sensitivity in the resolvent across flow discontinuities leads to significant discrepancies between numerically computed and the analytical input and output modes if shock effects are not properly accounted for. In particular, we find that the resolvent operator exhibits singular behaviour at the shock location. Specifically, the inviscid (where the shock is treated purely as a flow discontinuity) and viscous analytical leading resolvent modes do not converge as the viscosity parameter $\mu \rightarrow 0$ , which affects the accuracy of flow control and stability analyses that rely on resolvent-based methods. Furthermore, the derived solutions serve as benchmarks for verifying numerical schemes designed to compute adjoint and resolvent modes in shock-laden flows, ensuring that they capture the correct physical behaviour in the presence of shocks.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Modeling and Validation of Tongue-Induced Unsteady Loading in Turbocharger Radial Turbine Using a 1D Approach With 3D LES

  2026-01-08

  article

  In aviation, turbochargers adapted from ground-based systems are employed in intermittent combustion engines to improve efficiency and performance. However, these units frequently operate under off-design conditions, making them vulnerable to blade failures caused by aerodynamically induced resonances. This study presents a one-dimensional (1D) modeling approach for simulating unsteady loading in turbocharger turbines. The model integrates the theoretical design of the volute with a viscous flow solver that accounts for volute curvature and the circumferentially continuous nature of the outflow. The 1D model effectively captures tongue-induced unsteady loading and shows good agreement with results from three-dimensional (3D) large eddy simulations (LES), demonstrating its capability in accurately predicting unsteady aerodynamic forces on radial turbine blades. Additionally, the study identifies the mechanisms responsible for cyclic blade loading and associated vibrations. Ongoing work focuses on further refining the 1D model for improved predictive accuracy and deepening the investigation into the influence of the volute tongue on unsteady blade loading.

  PublisherDOI

• From Coils to Surface Recession: Fully Coupled Simulation of Ablation in ICP Wind Tunnels

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2026-02-17

  preprintOpen access

  This work presents a fully coupled, multiphysics computational framework for predicting the thermo-chemical material response of thermal protection systems in inductively coupled plasma (ICP) wind tunnels. The framework integrates a high-fidelity Navier-Stokes plasma solver, an electromagnetic field solver, and a discontinuous-Galerkin material response solver using a partitioned coupling strategy. This enables an ab initio, end-to-end simulation of the 350 kW Plasmatron X facility at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), including plasma generation, electromagnetic heating, near-wall thermochemistry, and time-accurate material ablation. The model captures key ICP physics such as vortex-mode recirculation, Joule-heating-driven plasma formation, and Lorentz-force-induced flow confinement, and accurately predicts the transition from subsonic to supersonic jet behavior at low pressures. Validation against cold-wall calorimetry and graphite ablation experiments shows that predicted stagnation-point heat fluxes fall well within experimental uncertainty, while fully coupled simulations accurately reproduce measured stagnation temperature histories and recession rates with errors below 12% and 10%, respectively. Remaining discrepancies during early transient heating are attributed to uncertainties in power-coupling efficiency, equilibrium ablation modeling, and material property datasets. Overall, the framework demonstrates strong predictive capability for ICP wind tunnel environments and provides a foundation for improved design, interpretation, and planning of hypersonic material testing campaigns.

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Material

  AIP Publishing · 2026-01-20

  articleOpen access

  Additional results for zero-, one-, and two-dimensional simulations.

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Material

  AIP Publishing · 2026-01-20

  articleOpen access

  Additional results for zero-, one-, and two-dimensional simulations.

  PublisherDOI

• Experimental study of fluid-thermal-structural interactions in a Mach-10 compression corner using super-ellipse-based photogrammetry

  Experiments in Fluids · 2026-04-22

  articleOpen access

  Abstract An experimental study is conducted of the fluid-thermal-structural interaction of a clamped compliant panel exposed to the intense shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction (SWBLI) induced by a compression ramp at Mach 10. Initial measurements of the underlying flowfield with a rigid ramp showed the incoming boundary layer to be transitional, and the SWBLI was observed to vary from attached to fully separated as the ramp angle was increased from 10 $$^\circ $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mmultiscripts> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mo>∘</mml:mo> </mml:mmultiscripts> </mml:math> to 30 $$^\circ $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mmultiscripts> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mo>∘</mml:mo> </mml:mmultiscripts> </mml:math> . For the compliant panel, a sealed cavity behind the panel allowed the effects of pressure-differential induced strains to be studied in the context of characterizing surface response to the aero-thermal load. Full-field, time-resolved panel deformations were measured using high-speed photogrammetry enabled by a new high-fidelity marker-tracking routine, which was shown to outperform existing methods. Substantial static panel deformations (of the order of several times the panel thickness) were produced by the intense aero-thermal loading environment. These deformations, combined with induced thermal and pressure gradients across the panel, were found to significantly modify the nature of existing panel modes (both the frequency and the displacement distributions) and introduce new, irregular mode shapes not predicted by classical clamped-plate theory; SolidWorks ® simulations were performed to demonstrate that these new mode shapes were a result of the underlying panel curvature. Increasing the ramp angle resulted in a wider variety of panel modes becoming excited, while increasing the pressure differential across the panel typically produced further increases in modal frequencies and decreases in vibrational amplitudes. The transient panel response was characterized and it was found that the lower frequency mode shapes tended to gradually increase in vibrational frequency as the panel heated up and further deformed; however, higher frequency modes ( $$f \gtrsim 3 \hspace{.075 cm} \textrm{kHz}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>f</mml:mi> <mml:mo>≳</mml:mo> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> <mml:mspace/> <mml:mtext>kHz</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ) generally showed the opposite behavior. Furthermore, as the panel deformed through the test time, the average vibrational spectra root-mean-square power was generally found to monotonically decrease.

  PublisherDOI

• Petrov-Galerkin model reduction for thermochemical nonequilibrium gas mixtures

  Journal of Computational Physics · 2025-04-10 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jonathan B. Freund

  40 shared

• Sanjiva K. Lele

  Stanford University

  21 shared

• Philippe H. Geubelle

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  18 shared

• Marco Panesi

  Politecnico di Milano

  16 shared

• Qi Zhang

  University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

  12 shared

• Mahesh Natarajan

  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  12 shared

• Palash Sashittal

  Princeton University

  10 shared

• Jesse Capecelatro

  10 shared