Welcome to the mfX research group!
We are a computational group at the University of Edinburgh investigating a range of multiscale flow problems that target important engineering challenges of the 21st century in health, transport, water and energy. Our research spans fundamental engineering science at the nano/micro/meso/macro scales, multiscale method development, highly parallel software development that run on supercomputers, and industry-focused engineering applications.
Examples of our recent work include: non-equilibrium gas transport through porous media for safer oil/gas reservoir management; nano/micro bubble cavitation dynamics for disease targeting; nano/micro-engineered surfaces with improved performance (e.g. anti-icing, marine drag reduction, nanotube water filtration membranes, evaporating cooling nanopipes); liquid-surface damage analysis; granular and pedestrian flow predictions.
We actively collaborate with researchers from the UK and around the world, and engage with various industrial companies to adapt our techniques for their problems.
Our group has been at hard at work, with four new papers published in the last month!
Pengxu published his first PhD paper on resolving the mechanisms of acoustic-wave-induced ice nucleation in Nanoscale, along with Rohit and Saikat.
Abdullah published his second PhD paper in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics on spectral mechanisms for heat transfer in solid/liquid interfaces, in the presence of a liquid-vapour meniscus, with Rohit and Sree Hari.
Patrick publsihed his third paper on surface roughness effects on heterogeneous vapour bubble nucleation in Journal of Chemical Physics, along with Rohit and Duncan.
And finally, Duncan published his most recent work in Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, investigating ionic adsorption on bulk nanobubbles, questioning one of the leading theories for nanobubble stability, with Patrick and Livio.
Stay tuned for more research articles, exploring the beyond the limits of classical thermodynamic understanding in multiscale fluids!
We are delighted to announce that Shaokang Li passed his PhD viva with minor corrections! His work concerns molecular kinetic modelling of non-equilibrium evaporating flows at liquid-vapour interfaces.
Congratulations again to Dr Shaokang Li, who will be joining Prof. Yonghao Zhang in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.
We have been busy! We are pleased to announce three new publications in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C (Abdullah, Sree Hari, and Rohit), Physical Review E (Yichong and Livio), and Nano Letters (Saikat and Rohit)!
These research projects each employ high-fidelity Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations to explore non-trivial non-equilibrium phenomena, which would not be possible with more conventional continuum-based modelling. Stay tuned for more papers on the way!
We are delighted to announce that Sarah Davidson passed her PhD viva with minor corrections! Her thesis: Mesoscopic Modelling of Membrane-Fluid Interactions using Peridynamics: Application to Deformable and Fracturing Beams modelled the action of 2D bicuspid valves, in veins of the leg, using a coupled Peridynamics (PD), Immersed Boundary (IB), and cascaded lattice Boltzmann method (CLBM), and investigated the adverse resulting flow conditions with damaged and aging valve tissue.
Congratulations again to Dr Sarah Davidson, and we wish her all the best for the future!
We are delighted to welcome Thejas Hulikal Chakrapani and Taher Meydando into mfX. Thejas joins us as a PDRA investigating heat transfer at solid-fluid interfaces, having completed his PhD at the University of Twente. Taher joins us a 1st year PhD student, and will perform MD simulations of nanobubble cavitation under electric fields. We look forward to working with them both, and excited to see how they progress!