Assistant Professor, Aerospace-Mechanical Engineering | Member of the Graduate Faculty
James Threadgill is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (AME) at UArizona. His research focuses on high-speed fluid dynamics related to shock/boundary layer interactions, with relevance to transition, flow control, and aerodynamic heating. Prof. Threadgill has led numerous experimental efforts to investigate 2D and 3D topologies (Threadgill and Bruce, 2020; Padmanabhan et al. 2021, Threadgill and Little, 2022) associated with complex SBLI flows, and has applied a wide range of novel flow diagnostics, signal processing techniques, and manufacturing processes (including tomographic PIV, infrared thermography, high-speed schlieren, wavelet analysis, bicoherence, 3D printed models, etc.). With Prof. Little, he identified a new unsteadiness feature of transitional SBLIs that explained prior observation of reattachment shock motion preceding unsteadiness at separation (Threadgill et al., 2021). Prof. Threadgill has established three new wind tunnel facilities at Imperial College London (UK) and the UArizona, spanning Mach numbers between 1.4 and 5.0. Beyond experimentation, Prof. Threadgill has published theoretical characterization of 3D SBLIs (Threadgill and Little, 2020) crucial to scaling of the phenomenon on applied vehicles. Current research projects include collaborators from across the US and Europe. He is an active participant in the academic community, has delivered seminars internationally, and has been a senior member of AIAA since 2020.