Dr S K Dadzie, Dr F Doster
Applications accepted all year round
About the Project
A fully funded PhD studentship is available from the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences of Heriot-Watt University under a Leverhulme Trust research grant to develop new simulation tools for porous media flows.
Technologies that depend on a gas/liquid flowing in micro- and nano-devices are important in various industrial applications. These include cooling of electronic systems, energy production, biological systems and others. Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) have micron to sub-micron sized features, and display unexplained behaviour that baffles conventional fluid mechanical understanding. This PhD position is to perform a numerical implementation of various new continuum flow equations and test these on several micro- and nano-scale geometries. New porous media continuum flow models will be developed at both the pore- and Darcy-scale using Korteweg-type compressible fluid flow equations. OpenFOAM is the CFD platform for conducting the numerical development. Implementation of the new pore-scale continuum flow equations will require implementations of new numerical schemes. Implementation of the Darcy-scale equations will involve modification to already-existing porous media solvers that are based on the classical Darcy equation. Evaluation of the performance of the new flow models will be achieved using different routes: simulations of specific non-conventional flow configurations such as thermal creeping flows (or flows generated by temperature gradients) with validations against results from Direct Simulation Monte Carlo that will be performed on HPC; simulations will also be run to investigate flow structures through realistic micro-computed tomography images of rock samples and compared with experimental data where available. He/She will be part of a research team consisting of postdocs based at the Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh.
The Schools of Engineering at both Heriot-Watt University and Edinburgh University are acknowledged UK centres for fluid dynamics research, with regular international industrial and academic visitors. They provide a highly supportive local research environment for their postgraduate students. The skills developed in the course of the project will equip the PhD student for fluid dynamics for emerging applications in the coming decades.
Funding Notes
Application is open to UK and International candidates. All must have or expect to have a First class (UK Honours degree) in Maths, Physics or Engineering; or an undergraduate degree at 2:1 or above and Masters award at Merit level in Maths, Physics or Engineering. Selection will be based mainly on academic excellence and research potential. This is a fully funded Leverhulme Trust project.
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