Professor McDonald completed his PhD studies at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies.His graduate research concentrated on the development of novel models for the accurate prediction of micro-scale gas flows and their solution using state-of-the-art numerical methods and massive parallel distributed computational facilities.
In 2010, he joined the Centre for Computational Engineering Science at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH), in Aachen, Germany.There he developed a new method for the prediction of moderately non-equilibrium gas flows.This model is accurate in situations when the Navier-Stokes equations are invalid, such as micro-scale flows, highly rarefied flows, and high-speed hyper-sonic flows.Also, the mathematical structure of this new model means numerical solutions could be found more easily for many traditional engineering situations.
Professor McDonald joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ottawa in July, 2013.He is continuing his research into non-equilibrium fluid dynamics and computational fluid dynamics. The techniques he has developed extend naturally into many other fields and he is interested in applications involving radiation modelling, plasmas, and multi-phase flows.