Project description
Modelling of complex thin film flows
Accurate thin film modelling demands the use of specialised film flow models to capture surface-level flow effects. Despite progress in the field, complex flow situations involving a combination of both bulk fluid flow and surface film flow remain difficult to model. The EU-funded SURFING project will develop new mathematical models to simulate the flow of thin fluid sheets on moving curved surfaces. The models will be able to predict not only the evolution of an existing film but also its formation, collapse and breakup. Furthermore, the project will develop improved methods to couple thin film flow with bulk fluid flow that will be able to identify regions where surface level effects are relevant.
Objective
Physical phenomena that combine effects on a surface and that in the bulk occur in many fields, ranging from crystal growth in chemistry and proton diffusion in biomembranes, through tyre aquaplaning and self-cleaning materials. We consider this multi-scale problem specifically for coupled bulk-surface fluid flow. Simulating these problems with traditional fluid solvers is challenging because of the different scale of the surface phenomena versus that in the bulk. Towards this end, specialized thin film flow models have been developed to accurately capture surface-level flow effects. However, it remains impossible to automatically detect the formation of thin fluid sheets and resolve the bulk/sheet coupled flow. This limits the application of thin film models. Advances made in thin film modelling have not been applied to complex flow situations where, for example, a free flowing bulk fluid can form thin films over an obstacle, or where sufficient fluid collects on a moving thin fluid sheet to obtain bulk flow. Such problems rely on bulk flow simulations with significantly finer resolutions to capture the surface-level effects, which dramatically increases computation time making full dynamic simulations unrealistic for actual applications.
The primary objective of this project is to model bulk/surface flow phenomena numerically. We will propose novel mathematical models to computationally simulate flow of thin fluid sheets on moving curved surfaces, which can predict not just the evolution of an existing film, but also their formation, collapse and break up. We will develop efficient methods to two-way couple film flow with bulk fluid flow which are able to identify regions where surface level effects are relevant, on the fly. This fellowship will build on the expertise in fluid flow and particle methods of the researcher, and that in multi scale modeling, free boundary problems and advanced discretisation adaptivity of the host.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
4365 ESCH-SUR-ALZETTE
Luxembourg