Detailed simulations of environmental fluid dynamics
Abstract
The computational time will be used for the activities within different projects in the field of environmental fluid dynamics. A list of the current projects is available at Chalmers website:
(https://research.chalmers.se/organisation/?tab=projects&query=gaetano+sardina).
The projects are funded by the VR, the Swedish Research Council, FORMAS (three projects) and the Swedish Energy Agency.
The VR project will improve our knowledge of the microphysical processes in warm clouds (i.e. ice free) using novel numerical simulations across many relevant scales. In addition, we will derive new stochastic models for droplet size distributions and implement them in an existing LES atmospheric solver. To fulfill the project goals, we will combine our expertise in different disciplines: fluid mechanics, atmospheric physics, and statistical physics.
Two FORMAS projects are related to urban design and heat comfort in urban areas. Current urban design fairly addresses noise and wind comfort but do not consider thermal comfort and impact of green areas to reduce local temperatures and improve air quality. We will investigate future urban design to achieve thermal and air quality comfort for the majority of urban residents with CFD simulations. The final results will provide new guidelines for sustainable urban design and evaluate the best strategies to enhance urban comfort. We will employ a state of the art digital tool running on multiple GPUs based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) with unique features in terms of spatial resolution and computational speed developed at Fraunhofer-Chalmers Research Centre.
The research plan will be developed in close collaboration with the Gothenburg urban development department (Göteborgs Stadsbyggnadskontoret) that is interested in evaluating urban comfort and mitigation plans (in particular greenery use) to reduce local high-temperature islands.
Another FORMAS project will focus on the transport of microplastics in marine environment. We will employ Eulerian-Lagrangian simulations, stochastic particle models and fully resolved DNS to study the dynamics of complex shape plastic particles interacting with the turbulence in the Ocean. This project is a collaboration with the department of Mechanics at KTH.
Finally, the last project, funded by the Sweadish Energy Agency, will investigate the design of novel reactors for carbone-dioxide capture and utilization. We aim to develop a multiphase mathematical model coupled with chemical reactions to design the new generations of industrial reactors to efficiently capture CO2.
