Dr V Niasar
Applications accepted all year round
Competition Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
Porous media research has a very wide range of applications in petroleum engineering, hydrogeology, paper and wood industry, chemical engineering, etc. This project seeks to develop novel computational pore-scale techniques to improve our understanding of multiphase flow and transport in porous media, specially the dynamics of two-phase flow, capillarity, and reactive transport.
The project will cover image analysis of natural rocks such as sandstones, development of numerical codes for simulating multiphase flow in porous media using pore-network models or direct CFD models and investigation of non-Darcy flow in porous media. Possibly limited micromodel laboratory experiments will be performed for validation of the simulations. The applicant should be familiar with “flow and transport in porous media” and ideally should have a 1st or 2:1 degree (or equivalent) in hydrogeology, petroleum engineering, physics, or computational mathematics. The applicant should be familiar with programming in Fortran, C or C++.
Successful candidates will be enrolled in the 3-year Ph.D. program of the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science. Starting date is negotiable.
The successful PhD candidate will be a member of the IMPRES (Integrated Multiscale Porous media Research) team, which has been recently established. IMPRES team focused on diverse problems of porous media applications across different scales through advanced computational and experimental methods. The state-of-the-art micromodel lab, access to DIAMOND synchrotron and microCT imaging facilities are some of the available experimental facilities.
Funding Notes
Funding covers tuition fees and annual maintenance payments of at least the Research Council minimum (currently £13,863) for eligible UK and EU applicants. EU nationals must have lived in the UK for 3 years prior to the start of the programme to be eligible for a full award (fees and stipend). Other EU nationals may be eligible for a fees-only award. Self-funded applicants are also welcome.
Applicants should demonstrate academic excellence and high motivation for research, and should have or expect to achieve at least a 2.1 degree in chemical engineering or a related subject.
References
http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/vahid.niasar/