Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Rodney O. Fox

Herbert L. Stiles Professor of Chemical Engineering

3162B Sweeney Hall
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011-2230

Phone (515)294-9104
Fax (515)294-2689
rofox@iastate.edu

Education
PhD, ChE, Kansas State University, 1987
MS, ChE, Kansas State University, 1985
BS, (cum laude), ChE, Kansas State University, 1982

Teaching/Office Hours Schedule

Honors and Awards

Fellow, American Physical Society
ISU Award for Outstanding Achievement in Research
UDCT Golden Jubilee Visiting Fellowship Lecture, Mumbai, India
Dr. G.P. Kane Chemcon Distinguished Speaker Award, Indian Inst. of Chemical Engineers, Hyderabad, India
Glenn Murphy Professor of Engineering
Halliburton Company Teaching Award
Dow Outstanding New Faculty Award, ASEE Midwest Section
1991 Presidential Young Investigator Award
NATO Postdoctoral Fellow
NSF Graduate Fellow
Fulbright Scholar, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland

Research Interests

Our research focuses on the development, implementation and validation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools for Chemical Reaction Engineering. With the ever-increasing power of desktop computers, CFD has become a powerful tool for chemical reactor analysis, design and optimization in the chemical process industry. Its successes have led to a growing demand for greater sophistication and range in the types of problems that can be treated. Thus, the elaboration of accurate yet tractable models for the manifold physical and chemical processes that occur in industrial-scale reactors is still very much an open and challenging field of inquiry. In attacking these problems, our modeling efforts draw on a large range of tools originating in diverse fields including probability theory and stochastic processes, non-linear dynamics, computational science and engineering, chemical reaction engineering, and transport phenomena.

Other Information

American Chemical Society
American Institute of Chemical Engineers
American Physical Society
American Society of Engineering Education
Omega Chi Epsilon
Phi Kappa Phi
Sigma Xi
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Research Projects

  1. U.S. DOE NETL, Development, Verification, and Validation of Multiphase Models for Polydisperse Flows
  2. U.S. DOE NETL, Modeling of Reacting Multiphase Flows with MFIX
  3. U.S. DOE OSCR, Micro-Mesoscopic Modeling of Heterogeneous Chemically Reacting Flows (MMM-HCRF) Over Catalytic/Solid Surfaces
  4. U.S. DOE NERI, Detailed Reaction Kinetics for CFD Modeling of Nuclear Fuel Pellet Coating for High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors
  5. National Science Foundation, NIRT: Functional Nanoparticle Formation by “Flash NanoPrecipitation” and Block Copolymer Directed Assembly
  6. National Science Foundation, NIRT: Multiscale Simulation of Nanoparticle Aggregation for Scale  Up of High-Rate Synthesis Methods
  7. National Science Foundation, MRI: Acquisition of a High-Speed Particle Image Velocimetry System for Fluid Dynamics Research
  8. National Science Foundation, CFD Models for Liquid-Phase Chemical Reactors: Validation of PDF and Large-Eddy Simulations Using Stereo PIV and Reactive PLIF Experiments
  9. Univation Technologies, Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of Unipol Gas Phase Reactor

Selected Publications

Fox, R. O., Computational Models for Turbulent Reacting Flows, Cambridge University Press (2003).

Fox, R. O., “CFD models for analysis and design of chemical reactors,” in Advances in Chemical Engineering, vol. 31, Ed. G. B. Marin, Elsevier, pp. 231-305 (2006).

Fox, R. O., “Introduction and fundamentals of modeling approaches for polydisperse multiphase flows,” in Multiphase Reacting Flows: Modelling and Simulation, Eds. D. L. Marchisio and R. O. Fox, Springer Verlag pp. 1-40 (2007).

Fan, R., and R. O. Fox, “Segregation in polydisperse fluidized beds: Validation of a multi-fluid model,” Chemical Engineering Science 63, 272 (2008).

Desjardins, O., R. O. Fox, and P. Villedieu, “A quadrature-based moment method for dilute fluid-particle flows,” Journal of Computational Physics 227, 2514 (2008).

Gokarn, A., F. Battaglia, R. O. Fox, J. C. Hill, and J. Reveillon, “Large eddy simulations of incompressible turbulent flows using parallel computing techniques,” International Journal of Numerical Methods in Fluids 56, 1819 (2008).

Fox, R. O., F. Laurent, and M. Massot, “Numerical simulation of spray coalescence in an Eulerian framework: direct quadrature method of moments and multi-fluid method,” Journal of Computational Physics 227, 3058 (2008).

Mishra, S. K., K. Muralidharan, S. Pannala, S. Simunovic, C. S. Daw, P. Nukala, R. O. Fox, P. A. Deymier, and G. Frantziskonis , “Construction of spatiotemporal compound wavelet matrix for multiscale simulation of diffusion from reactive boundaries,” International Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering 6, A28 (2008).

Liu, Y., C. Cheng, Y. Liu, R. K. Prud’homme, and R. O. Fox, “Mixing in a multi-inlet mixer (MIVM) for flash nanoprecipitation,” Chemical Engineering Science 63, 2829 (2008).

Fox, R. O., “A quadrature-based third-order moment method for dilute gas-particle flows,” Journal of Computational Physics 227, 6313 (2008).

Markutskya, S., S. Subramaniam, R. D. Vigil, and R. O. Fox, (Invited Paper) “On Brownian dynamics simulation of nanoparticle aggregation,” Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 47, 3338 (2008).

Feng, H., M. G. Olsen, R. O. Fox, and J. C. Hill, “Conditional statistics for passive-scalar mixing in a confined wake flow,” Physics of Fluids 20, 077105 (2008).