Turbulent flows laden with drops are ubiquitous in nature and in our everyday life. These flows play a key-role in various applications, from geophysical phenomena to food and industrial processes.
The presence of deformable of drops, which can interact with turbulence and the surrounding drops, modify the classical single-phase turbulence nature of these flows with direct consequences on the mixing of heat, mass, and momentum. In this project, we want to investigate the heat transfer process in the presence of large and deformable drops, which can also break and coalesce.
The problem will be studied by performing a series of large-scale numerical simulations that consider a channel flow configuration.
The simulations will adopt an innovative approach based on direct numerical simulations of turbulence, coupled with a phase-field method - used to describe the interfacial phenomena - and the energy equation – used to describe the temperature field behavior.
The wide range of spatial and temporal scales involved in the problem requires the use of high-resolution grids and thus high-performance computing infrastructures are required.
The outcomes of the simulations will be used to develop sub-models, which will significantly help the optimization and improvement of industrial applications, as well as enhance the general understanding and prediction of environmental phenomena.
TU Wien, Austria