DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING Indian Institute Of Technology Madras
team

Sundararajan Natarajan

Professor, Pandurangan Faculty Fellow

207, Machine Design Section

PhD Institute of Mechanics and Advanced Materials, Cardiff School of Engineering, Cardiff, UK, 2011 B.E. Mechanical Engineering, Bharathiar University, India, 1999

+91-44 -2257- 4656

snatarajan[at]iitm[.]ac[.]in

Scopus ID
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  • Born in Madras in 1978, Dr. Sundararajan Natarajan (Sundar) joined the Machine Design Section, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Madras on 10th Sep 2014, as an Assistant Professor. Before this Sundar was a post-doctoral research fellow in the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Sundar graduated in Computational Mechanics with a PhD from Cardiff University, UK, under the guidance of Professor Stéphane PA Bordas and Dr Pierre Kerfriden.
  • Sundar is an active member of legato team. Sundar’s research interests includes development and application of advanced discretization techniques for moving boundary problems within a multi physics/multiscale framework.

  • Computational Mechanics (FEM, VEM, XFEM, PFEM, SBFEM, SFEM, Meshless, Isog),
  • Discretisation techniques,
  • Moving boundary problems
  • Multiphysics problems

  1. Pandurangan Faculty Fellow, IIT Madras, 2025
  2. ASA Travel award to attend ASA meeting, San Diego, Dec 2019
  3. Post-doctoral research fellow, School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 2012-2014.
  4. Session Chair, Advances & Applications of the Generalized/Extended Finite Element Method, USNCCM 2013, Jul 22-25, 2013.
  5. NSF travel award to attend NSF workshop on ‘Barycentric coordinates in Geometry Processing and Finite/Boundary Element Methods’, July 25-27 2012, USA.
  6. Zienkiewicz best PhD prize, Association of Computational Mechanics in Engineering, 2012.
  7. Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme, PhD studentship, UK, 2008 – 2011.
  8. Cardiff School of Engineering PhD Studentship, Cardiff University, Wales, 2009-2011..
  9. Best student paper presentation, 23rd Biennial Conference on Numerical Analysis, Strathclyde, UK, June 2009.
  10. Management award for outstanding contribution to business through technology, GE-ITC, 2005, 2007
  11. Gold medalist – undergraduate education, Bharathiar University, 1999.
  12. Best outgoing student – Kongu Engineering College, Erode, 1999.

    Current Courses

  • ME5204 - Finite Element Analysis
  • ME5281 - Mechanical Lab (PG)

    Previous Courses

  • ME7230 - Applied Finite Element Method
  • ME5201 - Computational Methods in Engineering
  • ME3481 - Mechanical Lab - UG I
  • ME2200 - Materials and Design
  • ME1100 - Engineering Drawing

  1. Mixed finite-element approach for Cahn-Hilliard-type diffusion coupled with elasticity, T Kireeti, K Shiva Reddy, A Rajagopal, S Natarajan
  2. Acta Mechanica, 2025
  3. Phase-Field Modeling of Fatigue Fracture in Porous Functionally Graded Materials, AM Shajan, R Piska, S Natarajan
  4. International Journal of Fatigue, 2025
  5. Damage growth in multiphase composites subjected to thermo-mechanical fatigue loading based on phase field method, S Thoudam, S Natarajan, KA Kanjarla, RK Annabattula, Composite Structures, 119273, 2025
  6. Octree-based scaled boundary finite element approach for polycrystal RVEs: A comparison with FEM and FFT, SK Gaddam, S Natarajan, KA Kanjarla, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 2025
  7. An extensible set of parent elements to facilitate the isoparametric concept for polygons at finite strains: A scaled boundary finite element approach
  8. ET Ooi, B Sauren, S Natarajan, C Song, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering 437 (117803), 2025

  1. CMAME
  2. Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials
  3. Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements
  4. Mechanics Based Design of Structures and Machines; An International Journal
  5. Theoretical and Applied Fracture Mechanics
  6. Engineering Fracture Mechanics

  1. Partition of Unity Methods, Stéphane PA Bordas, Alexander Menk, Sundararajan Natarajan, Wiley 2023. (doi:10.1002/9781118535875)

  • Free boundary problems in Mechanics, 23-21. Oct 2019 with Prof. Stéphane PA Bordas, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg.
  • Partition of Unity Methods, 12 – 18 Dec 2016 with Prof. N. Sukumar, University of California, Davis, USA.
  • Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method, 14-18, Nov 2016 with Prof. Chongmin Song, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Nonlinear continuum mechanics, 18 – 29 Jul 2016 with Prof.
  • Timon Rabczuk, Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany. Multiscale Methods in Mechanics (3M), 23 May – 3 Jun 2016, with Prof. Stéphane PA Bordas, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg.