Ken Miller

Kenneth Miller, Professor

Partial Differential Equations, University of Chicago; PhD, 1975

Contact

Awards

Excellence in Teaching Award, 2005

Research: Fluid Dynamics

Vortices are the most significant features of fluid flows in many situations. Ken Miller considers flows in which vortices are concentrated in certain regions over long periods of time, and for which the fluid is inviscid, i.e. viscous forces can be ignored. In some recent papers the possible positioning of vortex patches in equilibrium with flow past a cylinder or a sphere has been studied and an investigation of the stability of such configurations has been carried out. Another recent work is a study of solitary waves in equilibrium with a point vortex. All of this research makes use of extensive computations, although it is some sense complementary to conventional "computational fluid dynamics." Other papers consider more theoretical results of related interest.

Selected Publications

  • A. R. Elcrat, K. G. Miller, "Free surface waves in equilibrium with a vortex", European Journal of Mechanics B/Fluids, 25 (2006), 255-266.
  • A. R. Elcrat, B. Fornberg, K. G. Miller, "Stability of vortices in equilibrium with a cylinder", Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 544 (2005), 53-68
  • A. R. Elcrat, K. G. Miller, "A monotone iteration for axisymmetric vortices with swirl," Differential and Integral Equations, 16 (2003), 949-968.
  • A. R. Elcrat, K. G. Miller, "A monotone iteration for concentrated vortices," Nonlinear Analysis, 44 (2001), 777-789.
  • A. R. Elcrat, B. Fornberg, K. G. Miller,"Some steady axisymmetric vortex flows past a sphere," Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 433 (2001), 315-328.
  • K. G. Miller, "Equilibrium vortex configurations in domains with boundary," Quarterly of Applied Mathematics, 56 (1998), 553-568.