Modeling small-scale features

Professor Anna-Karin Tornberg will receive funding from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to recruit an international researcher for a postdoctoral position at the Department of Mathematics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

The aim of the project is to improve simulation methods for modeling flows of liquids or gases. Such flows are often influenced by microscopic details on surfaces or by fine structures in the material the flow interacts with.

Examples of such effects include how the microscopic properties of shark skin or lotus leaves influence fluid drag. Inspired by nature, engineers have developed materials for the surfaces of airplane wings, boats, and trains to minimize friction and therefore reduce energy consumption. Another example is the microscopic structure of soil and the role it plays in draining water during floods. Porous materials are thus used in manufacturing industries to control the flow of gases and fluids, for example in filtering, cooling, and catalytic gas exhaust reduction methods.

Computer simulations help to bring deeper understanding of the processes governing fluid or gas flow interactions with other materials, leading to technical progress. However, including small-scale features in the full-scale simulations results in infeasibly long computation times. The models need to be simplified without losing the key effects of the microscale interactions.

The current project will focus on such simplified flow models for two classes of materials. The first class will model flows over a rough solid surface, the second one will study flows over a porous surface, where the fluid also enters the media.

Foto: Jann Lipka