Duffield Hall at sunset.
Two students walking on Engineering Quad towards Duffield
Two students working on a autonomous plane
Woman taking a photo of a mumified bird
Students walking along Ho Plaza

Gregory Bewley

Assistant Professor
Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Biography

Greg Bewley is a graduate of Cornell University and is very proud to return to his Alma mater, where he studied Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and where he built composite acoustic guitars and composite wings for a sailboat. In the intervening years, he was awarded a PhD from Yale University for discovering how to observe the quantized vortex dynamics of turbulent liquid helium. He continued this work at the University of Maryland before crossing the ocean for an opportunity at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, Germany. As a group leader there, he led the effort to bring a new facility, the Variable Density Turbulence Tunnel, to life.

Research Interests

Greg Bewley’s work focuses on turbulence, both its intrinsic properties and its role in various environmental settings. In clouds, turbulence causes droplets to collide. In superfluid helium, it causes quantized vortices to reconnect. Left to itself, the turbulence slowly dissipates and disappears. Greg Bewley has contributed to making all of these phenomena accessible experimentally through novel interpretation of experimental data and the invention of new devices and techniques. His interest is in providing inspiration for theoretical understanding through experimental observations made, for example, in soccer-ball cloud chambers and in wind tunnels. An emerging interest is the interaction between turbulence and animal flight.

Teaching Interests

Fluid dynamics, Turbulence, Experimental fluid dynamics, Dynamics of Flight.

Selected Publications

  • Sinhuber, M., E. Bodenschatz, G P Bewley. 2015.“On the Decay of Turbulence at High Reynolds Numbers.”Physical review letters114(3): 034501.
  • Bewley, G P., E W. Saw, E Bodenschatz. 2013.“Observation of the Sling Effect.”New journal of physics15(8): 083051-083051.
  • Bewley, G P., K. Chang, E Bodenschatz. 2012.“On Integral Length Scales in Anisotropic Turbulence.”Physics of Fluids24(6): 061702.
  • Bewley, G P., M S. Paoletti, K R. Sreenivasan, D P Lathrop. 2008.“Characterization of Reconnecting Vortices in Superfluid Helium.”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences105(37): 13707-13710.
  • Bewley, G P., D P. Lathrop, K R Sreenivasan. 2006.“Visualization of Quantized Vortices.”Nature441(7093): 588.

Selected Awards and Honors

  • Robert ’55 and Vanne ’57 Cowie Teaching Award (Cornell University, College of Engineering) 2019
  • Gordon Lankton Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow (Cornell University, College of Engineering) 2016
  • Turbulent Mixing and Beyond young scientist award 2011
  • Grumman graduate fellowship 2000

Education

  • B.S. (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering), Cornell University, 2000
  • Ph.D. (Mechanical Engineering), Yale University, 2006

Websites