<p>I am currently a MS grad student in California and am looking for a Phd program that interests me.
I am halfway between a mechanical engineer and applied physicist in my training and am looking for a school that emphasizes next generation power plants/propulsion systems. I want to apply my knowledge into developing new "engines" like thermo-acoustic engines, ion propulsion, ITER...etc....Any suggestions....?</p>
<p>CFD, thermo, Non-linear dynamics are my specialties...along with Robust Control and Test and Measurement...Thanks</p>
<p>You need to do a bit of research on your own. Since you are pretty specific about the field you are interested in, go to the main journals in the area and look up those who are publishing. This will give you an idea of what programs to apply to.</p>
<p>I’m mostly familiar with ion propulsion which is a form of electric propulsion. Most of the research done in this area are in mechanical and/or aerospace engineering departments, though it does use a lot of plasma physics, which is essentially what electric propulsion is based off of. Most of the labs you’ll find in this area are experimental, not so much computational (stating this as you mentioned 1 of your specialties is in CFD).</p>
<p>My background is also in CFD, mainly fundamental, and experimental fluids, but I have also done research in electric propulsion (ion&hall thrusters) early in my undergrad. </p>
<p>Clancy Rowley @ Princeton’s MAE dpt came to my mind after reading your interests. He’s mainly a computational fluids person, but he’s done computational plasma & nonlinear dynamics research before. I don’t think Princeton does any power plant stuff tho.
They do, however, have one of the oldest EP programs (EPPDyL). A lot of the programs you see nowadays branched from there, but it’s kinda gone downhill the past couple of yrs.</p>