The Thermofluids section offers research expertise within the areas of fluid mechanics, multi-phase flow, reacting flows and combustion as well as experimentation and computation.

Multiphase Flow

In the field of multiphase flow, focus is on dilute gas-particle systems in different applications. Most of the effort is focused on non-conventional particles, characterised by non-sphericity and/or relatively large size ratios, and the interaction mechanisms between such particles and the flow structures in the carrying fluid and near-wall areas.

Reacting Flows

The work in reacting flows covers turbulent combustion (mainly solid biomass), super or near-critical flows and laminar reacting flows, e.g. in fuel cells. Efforts are focused on the physical aspects of reacting flows, either single or two-phase, and the interaction between fuel and oxidant.

Model development and validation

A key issue is to develop and validate models for gas-particle flow, combustion and laminar reacting flows, either in stand-alone in-house modelling tools or commercial CFD codes, thereby making the research available to research partners and industry.

The section has well equipped laboratories at its disposal. Test facilities include large scale testing of combustion processes, fuel cell and reformer systems, biofuel processing systems and flow facilities. Amongst others, data acquisition tools include FT-IR, mass spectroscopy, particle image and laser Doppler velocimetry.