Engineering Research Institute: Monthly Seminar

Engineering Research Institute: Monthly Seminar in VR II, room 148.

Title: Unveiling secrets of complex fluid flows with massively-parallel simulations.

Speaker: Pedro Simoes Costa, Post Doc at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.

The seminar will be in english.

Please register for this seminar. Light refreshments will be served.

Abstract:

Turbulent multiphase flows are ubiquitous in the environment and industry. Notable examples in Iceland are pyroclastic (volcanic) flows, the gas-liquid flow in a geothermal well, or fast debris flows in mountain slopes.

These flows are three-dimensional, chaotic and multiscale by nature, giving rise to spectacular and often dramatic phenomena. Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of turbulent flows are first-principles simulations that resolve all spatial and temporal scales of the system. Simulating turbulent multiphase flows poses the additional challenge of imposing appropriate kinematic/dynamic compatibility conditions at fluid-fluid or particle-fluid interfaces, while the interface itself moves and deforms with the flow.

These challenges make these first-principles simulations difficult, resulting in an unbalance between the limited fundamental knowledge of the physics of these flows, and their prevalent nature. Fortunately, the continuous increase in computing power, together with advances in the development of numerical methods has put these ambitious simulations in reach.

In the seminar, we briefly address the numerical and computational framework required for performing high-fidelity simulations in tens of thousands of CPUs or, more recently, in many-GPU systems. Then we will focus on how these massive simulations allowed us to devise physical models to better describe and predict turbulent transport of solid particles.