Stephen M. Ruffin

Stephen M. Ruffin

Associate Professor & Director, NASA’s Georgia Space Grant Consortium, Georgia Institute of Technology

National Chair of NASA's National Council of Space Grant Directors (NCSGD)

MLK Visiting Professor 2000-2001

Hosted by the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Dr. Stephen M. Ruffin is a Professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech; Director of NASA’s Georgia Space Grant Consortium (GSGC);

Bio

Dr. Stephen M. Ruffin is a Professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech; Director of NASA’s Georgia Space Grant Consortium (GSGC); Head of the Aerothermodynamics Research and Technology Laboratory; and Chair of the AE Aerodynamics and Fluid Mechanics Group. He is also National Chair of NASA's National Council of Space Grant Directors (NCSGD).

Dr. Ruffin holds a BS in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (1985) from Princeton University and an MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics (1987) from MIT. He earned a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics (1993) from Stanford University.

His expertise is in high temperature gas dynamics, compressible flow aerodynamics, and airframe propulsion integration. Dr. Ruffin is leading development of a 3-D Cartesian Grid based Navier-Stokes solver (NASCART-GT) for design applications and development of Cartesian-grid approaches for chemically reacting flows. He is developing novel approaches that allow for Navier-Stokes simulations using a purely Cartesian grid solver. His Aerothermodynamics Research and Technology Laboratory applied these techniques to applications as diverse as hypersonic planetary entry vehicles and flow physics, rotorcraft airframe interaction flows, transonic and supersonic missiles and unsteady store separation problems.

In 2009, he joined the faculty of Georgia Tech’s School of Engineering, where he has served as an outstanding educator.  He has been awarded a 2000 Meritor Inc. Faculty Excellence Award by the Women in Engineering Program at Georgia Tech and the CETL/Amoco Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award.  His teaching skills have been honed through participation in the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) National Effective Teaching Institute and as a “Class of 1969 Teaching Fellow.” His many areas of service at Georgia Tech include service on the Honor Committee, COE Promotion, Reappointment and Tenure Committee, AE Graduate Committee, and the COE Dean’s Faculty Advisory Committee.

Dr. Ruffin is also committed to the diversification student Georgia Tech and affiliate institutions.  He works with numerous campus organizations in their recruitment and retention efforts.  Dr. Ruffin is Director of the Alfred P. Sloan Scholars Program in Aerospace Engineering and recruits and mentors students for this program.  

Other honors for his efforts include the NASA Superior Performance Award (1992), NASA National Aerospace Plane CFD Validation Team Award (1992), and AIAA Best Thermophysics Paper Award (1993).  He has published over 57 articles in refereed journals and conference proceedings.

Dr. Ruffin has worked as a researcher at Princeton’s Jet Propulsion Lab and as an aerospace engineer at both Lewis (Internal Fluid Mechanics and Propulsion Systems Divisions) and Ames (Thermosciences Division) NASA Research Centers.

Between 1985 and 1987, he worked as an aerospace scientist at MIT’s Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, where he conducted studies of viscous-inviscid interaction on vortex dominated hypersonic flows over delta wings.  This work involved developing an accurate and efficient, Navier-Stokes solver for vortex flow analysis.

He returned to MIT in 2000 as an MLK Visiting Professor, hosted by the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Publications

Selected, 2009-2012

Ruffin, S.M., Lee, J.D., “Rotorcraft Flowfield Prediction Accuracy and Efficiency using a Cartesian Grid Framework,” Intl. Journal of Mathematical Models and Methods in Applied Sciences, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2009.

Ruffin, S.M., Lee, J.D., “Adaptation of a k-Epsilon Model to a Cartesian Grid Based Methodology,” International Journal of Mathematical Models and Methods in Applied Sciences, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2009.

Lee, Jinwook, Orsini, A., and Ruffin, S.M., “Unstructured Cartesian-Grid Methodology for Non-equilibrium Hypersonic Flows,” Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer, Vol. 24, No. 1, Jan-Mar 2010.

Malo-Molina, F., Gaitonde, D., Ebrahimi, H, and Ruffin, S.M., “Three-Dimensional Analysis of a Supersonic Combustor Coupled to Innovative Inward-Turning Inlets,” AIAA Journal, Vol. 48, No. 3, March, 2010.

Clark, I.G., Braun, R.D., and Ruffin, S.M., “Validation of Computational Analysis for Supersonic Tension Cone Static Aerodynamic Performance,” Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 49, No. 3, pp. 483-495, May-June, 2012.

Bopp, M.S., Theisinger, J.E., Ruffin, S.M., Braun, R. D., and Clark, I.G., “A Multi-Fidelity Approach to Estimate Heating for Three Dimensional Aeroshells,” Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 50, No. 4, pp. 754-762. Apr., 2013.

Ruffin, S.M., and Lee, Jinwook, “Implementation of a 3D Hilbert SFC into a Parallel Cartesian-Grid Flow Solver”, Intl. Journal of Mathematical Models and Methods in Applied Sciences, Vol. 6, Issue 7, 2012.

Ruffin, S.M., Zaki, M., and Sekhar, S., “A Normal Ray Refinement Technique for Cartesian-Grid Based Navier-Stokes Solvers, Intl. Journal of Computational Fluid Dynamics, Vol. 26, Issue 4, July, 2012.