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Prof K Sefiane
Applications accepted all year round
Competition Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
Applications are invited for postgraduate research leading to a PhD degree in the area of boiling in microchannels: integrated design of closed-loop cooling system for devices operating at high heat fluxes.
The project aims to advance the use of microchannels based cooling technology by solving major outstanding issues. Flow instabilities and maldistribution are identified as a major hurdle towards effective implementation of this technology to a variety of applications.
The objectives of this project are to:
1. Develop world leading fully integrated and instrumented microchannels for more fully characterising advanced cooling systems based on boiling in micro-channels.
2. Perform advanced and detailed experiments generating new data on pressure fluctuations, local temperature, vapour dynamics and liquid film thickness during boiling in silicon and metal parallel micro-channels that will help elucidate fundamental mechanisms and validate the models.
3. Validate the models and apply them in the development of rational methods of integrated design for systems for the stable, near-isothermal cooling of components operating at high heat fluxes.
Further information:
Small-scale devices such as electronic chips, power rectifiers, radar arrays and chemical microreactors require cooling of areas of a few cm2 at heat fluxes now approaching several MW/m2, necessitating a progression from air to liquid and now potentially to evaporative cooling. In a DTI report on developments and trends in thermal management technologies, heat fluxes for power electronics and laser semi-conductors of above and beyond 1 MW/m2 were identified while in devices operating in the region of 100 W there can be local hot spots requiring removal of power densities of the order of 10 MW/m2. The performance and long-term reliability of many applications requires near-uniform, constant temperature, despite heat production that is spatially non-uniform and varies with time. Applications have specific constraints that influence the choice and working pressure of the coolant, e.g. electronic chips have to operate below a maximum temperature of 80oC, aerospace applications have to survive extremes of ambient temperature. Liquid-only cooling involves an increase in temperature of the coolant (and therefore a temperature gradient in the chip) from inlet to outlet.
The project aims to advance the use of microchannels based cooling technology by solving major outstanding issues. Flow instabilities and maldistribution are identified as a major hurdle towards effective implementation of this technology to a variety of applications.
The objectives of this project are to:
1. Develop world leading fully integrated and instrumented microchannels for more fully characterising advanced cooling systems based on boiling in micro-channels.
2. Perform advanced and detailed experiments generating new data on pressure fluctuations, local temperature, vapour dynamics and liquid film thickness during boiling in silicon and metal parallel micro-channels that will help elucidate fundamental mechanisms and validate the models.
3. Validate the models and apply them in the development of rational methods of integrated design for systems for the stable, near-isothermal cooling of components operating at high heat fluxes.
Further information:
Small-scale devices such as electronic chips, power rectifiers, radar arrays and chemical microreactors require cooling of areas of a few cm2 at heat fluxes now approaching several MW/m2, necessitating a progression from air to liquid and now potentially to evaporative cooling. In a DTI report on developments and trends in thermal management technologies, heat fluxes for power electronics and laser semi-conductors of above and beyond 1 MW/m2 were identified while in devices operating in the region of 100 W there can be local hot spots requiring removal of power densities of the order of 10 MW/m2. The performance and long-term reliability of many applications requires near-uniform, constant temperature, despite heat production that is spatially non-uniform and varies with time. Applications have specific constraints that influence the choice and working pressure of the coolant, e.g. electronic chips have to operate below a maximum temperature of 80oC, aerospace applications have to survive extremes of ambient temperature. Liquid-only cooling involves an increase in temperature of the coolant (and therefore a temperature gradient in the chip) from inlet to outlet.
Funding Notes
The project is partly funded (50%) by the University of Valenciennes in France which covers half of the UK/EU rate of tuition fee (including stipend).
The successful candidate will have to spend some time working in the laboratory in France.
Enthusiastic and self-motivated candidates are sought with a background in Engineering, Physics or Materials Science.
A first class honours or upper second (or equivalent for non-UK students) is the minimum qualification requirement, or a combination of qualification and professional experience equivalent to that level.
The successful candidate will have to spend some time working in the laboratory in France.
Enthusiastic and self-motivated candidates are sought with a background in Engineering, Physics or Materials Science.
A first class honours or upper second (or equivalent for non-UK students) is the minimum qualification requirement, or a combination of qualification and professional experience equivalent to that level.
Project supervisors
Career overview
Professor Khellil Sefiane, PhD, HDR, FRSC and FInstP, is a Professor and Chair of Thermophysical Engineering in the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. He served as the Head of the research Institute for Multiscale Thermofluids from 2018 to 2024 and as Head of the Institute for Materials and Processes from 2012 to 2015 at the same university. Professor Sefiane is the Vice-Chair of the UK National Heat Transfer Committee and represents the UK on the Scientific Council of the International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer, as well as on the European Thermal Committee, EUROTHERM. He has held various honorary appointments, including Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto, Canada (2008-2014), Visiting Professor at Kyushu University, Japan (2015), and WPI - World Premier International Professor at the International Centre for Carbon Neutral Energy Research (I*2CNER*) at Kyushu (2015-2019). Additionally, he is an honorary Professor at Tsinghua University in China (2022-2025) and an Extraordinary Professor at Pretoria University, South Africa (2019). He has been active in research for 28 years, focusing on multiphase flows, heat transfer, microfluidics, interfacial phenomena, and phase change, publishing over 250 journal papers and co-editing a textbook on drying complex fluid drops. Professor Sefiane has received several prestigious awards, including the Institute of Physics award in 2009, the Global Research Award by the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2011, and the Japan Society for Promotion of Science Award in 2014. He has taught at various universities across the UK, France, Canada, Japan, and China, and has secured research funding from multiple prestigious organisations.
Research interests
Professor Khellil Sefiane's research focuses on multiphase flows, heat transfer, microfluidics, interfacial phenomena, and phase change. They have been active in these areas for 28 years and have published over 250 journal papers in international journals. Professor Sefiane has also co-edited the textbook 'Drying of Complex Fluid Drops: Fundamentals and Applications,' published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2022. Their expertise includes interfacial processes and capillary phenomena, microscale heat transfer, wetting and phase change phenomena, and the thermal management of microsystems.
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