A study of particles-flow interactions based on the numerical solution of the Boltzmann equation
Cosimo Livi defended his PhD thesis at the department of Applied Physics and Science Education on April 19th.
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For his PhD research Cosimo Livi investigated numerical methods to describe particles suspended in Stokes flows, with the aim to improve the modelling techniques required to address transport of particles in low-pressure conditions. He successfully developed an approach to model fully-resolved particles in the framework of the Lattice-Boltzmann Method and Direct Simulation Monte Carlo Method. This approach can be employed to develop hybrid LBM-DSMC algorithms that include fully-resolved particle transport capabilities.
This class of problems is becoming more and more relevant in a large range of modern applications, from space industry to high-tech mechanical systems. When gas flows exhibit large rarefaction effects, solutions from the standard macroscopic solvers become questionable and a more fundamental solution, based on the the kinetic theory, must be used to correctly capture the physics of such systems.
In this work he proposed an approach based on two different kinetic solvers, namely the Lattice-Boltzmann Method and the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo Method, to describe the coupled interactions between flows and a large variety of solid particles. He suggested novel contributions of the existing algorithms and present results that can improve the current state-of-the-art techniques for particle transport, commonly used in modern industrial applications.
Title of PhD thesis: 'A study of particles-flow interactions based on the numerical solution of the Boltzmann equation'. Supervisors: Federico Toschi and Herman Clercx.