Abstract
The simulation of flows using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has advanced considerably in recent decades and is now an essential tool across industries ranging from aerospace design to process engineering. Although CFD is relatively mature for single-phase flows, multiphase flows (such as particle-laden flows) and multiphysics flows (such as those including microwaves or ultrasound) remain significantly more challenging to simulate, in part due to their intrinsic multiscale nature and conflicting numerical need.
In the recent years, high-order methods have gained considerable momentum in aeronautics, in part due to their significantly lower dispersion and dissipation, but also for their higher arithmetic intensity (FLOPS-to-byte ratio) which suits current hardware capabilities. However, these methods remain seldomly used in chemical-engineering applications, in part due to their multiphase and multiphysics nature.
This talk presents our efforts in designing Lethe, an open-source, high-order multiphysics framework for single- and multiphase flows built on the deal.II library. We first motivate the use of high-order finite elements for CFD applications in process engineering. Then, we present three cases that illustrate the role that these novel computational can play in simulating turbulent flows, particle-laden flows and microwave intensified process. We conclude by drawing some conclusions on the potential of these methods
We conclude by reflecting on the role of open-source software in developing accurate and efficient simulation tools, and some of the lessons learned during the development of Lethe. Finally, we outline future directions for this work, including the integration of AI-driven surrogate model as part of the design of unit operations.
Biography
Dr. Bruno Blais, PEng, PhD, is an Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Polytechnique Montreal. Before this, he was a Research Officer with the Automotive and Surface Transportation Portfolio of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC AST).
Dr. Blais’s expertise lies in the development, verification and validation of high-performance digital models for fluid mechanics, heat transfer and complex multiphase phenomena. He has earned a BEng in Chemical Engineering, a Grande École Engineering Diploma (D.Ing.) from ENSTA ParisTech, a Master in Fundamental Fluid Mechanics from ENSTA and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Polytechnique Montreal. Dr. Blais is a Vanier Graduate Scholar (2013−2016) and has received the Governor General’s Gold Academic Medal for his work on numerical modelling of multiphase flows. He is a strong advocate of open source software for science and has contributed extensively to open source libraries (Lethe, deal.II).