Professor Frederic Dias

Prof. Frederic Dias is an applied mathematician who has made pioneering contributions in mathematics, mechanics, physics and civil engineering.

Over the last 20 years, Frédéric Dias has been at the forefront of research on water waves. His interdisciplinary contributions have been to mathematics, mechanics, physics and civil engineering. He is particularly known for combining knowledge of advanced mathematical methods and real-world constraints applied to the development of realistic descriptions of important hydrodynamic problems. These contributions have been conceptual, analytical and numerical in nature, and have involved laboratory experiments as well as field observations.

A selection of significant achievements include:

1. development of a fast three-dimensional numerical wave tank, which efficiently mimics laboratory wave tanks;
2. demonstration that the classical approach for tsunami generation, consisting of translating the frozen deformation of the sea bottom towards the free surface and letting it propagate, has some major drawbacks;
3. derivation of a new system of equations for the study of water waves in the presence of viscous dissipation which is now used in industry;
4. development of a highly novel approach for the study of wave stability using the Maslov index and application to reaction-diffusion systems;
5. developments in the theory of wave turbulence and in particular in solitonic turbulence;
6. derivation of pressure impact formulas which show the great importance of compressible effects and led to the new concept of complete Froude scaling, now used in industry for the design of new sloshing experiments.

 

Videos:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm0tlYmpeiI       
2. http://vimeo.com/46433062          

Email: frederic.dias@ucd.ie
Website: Click here