Professor Grace’s interests lie in the fields of unsteady aerodynamics and aeroacoustics. She focuses on creating analytical and computational models of the mechanics which create sound and vibration. She is most interested in applications in which the vibration and sound result from the interactions of unsteady flows past solid bodies, such as for aircraft external structures and marine and aircraft propulsion systems. Her analyses are intended to be used as predictive tools in the design of next generation systems, and they offer a less expensive mode of prediction as compared to experiment.

Three examples of physical applications her research group has considered in the past are the noise generated by high-lift wing systems, the effect of vane clocking in turbines, and the vibration and sound generated when flow passes over wall apertures and cavities. The first is of great interest to commercial airline design, the second impacts blade fatigue in aircraft engines, and the third has a wide variety of applications ranging from the design of high speed trains to new configurations for better cooling in computer chips.

Recently, Professor Grace’s group has also done research related to gerbil hearing. In particular, a computational acoustic scattering model of the gerbil ear was created to analyze the head-related transfer function which describes how a given source of sound interacts with the gerbil ear when the gerbil is in a given environment.

Selected Publications

• S. M. Grace, E. Quaranta, B. Shinn-Cunningham and H. F. Voigt, “Simulation of the binaural environmental transfer function for gerbils using a boundary element method,”   Acta Acustica United with Acustica 94:310-320, 2008.
• Sheryl M. Grace, Douglas L. Sondak, Daniel J. Dorney, and Michael Cannamela, “Hybrid prediction of  fan  tonal noise,”  AIAA Paper No.2008-2992, 2008.
• Sheryl M. Grace, Douglas L. Sondak, Daniel J. Dorney, and Michaela Logue, “CFD Computation of Fan Interaction Noise,” IMECE2007-43779, Proceedings of the IMECE 07, ASME, Seattle, WA, Nov. 2007.
• S. M. Grace, D. E. Wroblewski, and W. G. Dewar, “Experimental Investigation of the Flow Characteristics Within a Shallow Wall Cavity for Both Laminar and Turbulent Upstream Boundary Layers,” Experiments in Fluids, 36:791-804, 2004.
• Sheryl M. Grace, “Numerical Simulation of the Forced Wave Equation as an Acoustic Post-processing Technique for CFD,” Aerotecnica Missili E Spazio, Journal of the Associazione Italiana di Aeronautica e Astronautica, 79:3-4, 75-80, July-December, 2000.
• Sheryl M. Grace, “Prediction of Low-frequency Tones Produced by Flow Through a Duct with a Gap,” Journal of Sound and Vibration, 229(4):859-878, Jan. 2000.
• Trevor H. Wood and Sheryl M Grace, “Inverse Aeroacoustic Problem for a Rectangular Wing in a Gust,” AIAA Journal, 38(2):203-210, February, 2000.
• Sheryl M. Grace, Trevor H. Wood, and Michael S. Howe, “Stability of High Reynolds Number Flow Past a Circular Aperture,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 455:2055-2066, June, 1999.
• Sheryl M. Grace, Kelly P. Horan and Michael S. Howe, “The Influence of Shape on The Rayleigh Conductivity of a Wall Aperture in The Presence of Grazing Flow,” Journal of Fluids and Structures, 12(3):335-351, April, 1998.