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Fabian Denner
Dipl.-Ing. (Univ. Stuttgart), Ph.D. (Imperial College London)

Phone: (514) 340-4711 Ext. 3292 Fax: (514) 340-5170 Room: J-5033
Primary sphere of excellence in research
Modeling and Artificial Intelligence
Secondary sphere(s) of excellence in research
Energy, Water and, Resources Innovative Materials
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Student research project(s)

Research interests and affiliations

Research interests

More information on our research can be found on the website of our group: www.polycfd.com

My research interests revolve around the modelling of multiphase flows and related physical phenomena:

  1. Multiphase flows: application of state-of-the-art numerical methods and software tools to analyze and predict gas-liquid (bubble, droplets, liquid jets) and particle-laden flows.

  2. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD): development of numerical methods for CFD of incompressible and compressible single-phase and multiphase flows.

  3. High-performance computing (HPC): development of software tools for the modelling of fluid flows and related physical phenomena on high-performance computing (HPC) architectures.

 

CFD and multiphase flow modelling

My work on CFD has been focusing for well over a decade on new and innovative numerical methods for the modelling of single-phase and multiphase flows at all speeds, ranging from incompressible to supersonic flows, including gas-liquid and particle-laden flows. The numerical frameworks I’ve been (co-)developing are designed for high-performance computing (HPC) systems.

Cavitation

The violent collapse of cavitation bubbles is known to erode surfaces, but cavitation bubbles can also enable chemical reactions (sonochemistry) and medical treatments. Yet predicting cavitation accurately and reliably is very challenging, as it involves rapidly evolving hydrodynamics paired with delicate acoustics, pushing the currently available numerical methods and software tools to their limits and beyond. This is why cavitation has become a central research topic in my group, as we can combine the development of new numerical methods with exciting applications in the fields of medicine, chemical and mechanical engineering.

Acoustics

Isolating and distinguishing the physical mechanisms modulating acoustic waves in moving and accelerating flows are important for noise control and to gain a more detailed understanding and precise interpretation of the information encoded in acoustic signals, for instance for acoustic remote sensing applications or to monitor and control medical ultrasound treatments. To this end, we develop and utilize tailored numerical methods and model systems that enable the study of complex acoustic phenomena, such as amplitude modulations of acoustic waves in accelerating flows.

Liquid jet breakup and atomization

The breakup of liquid jets into sprays and individual droplets is a phenomenon utilized in countless engineering applications, including fuel injection in aeroengines, inkjet and 3D printing, and irrigation of agricultural crops and fields. Despite its widespread application, many aspects of liquid jet breakup, such as the entrainment of nano-/microscopic particles or specific viscoelastic effects, are still not comprehensively understood, a gap that we aim to fill with state-of-the-art numerical tools.

Particle-laden flows

Particle-laden flows are intriguing due to their ubiquity in natural phenomena and industrial processes, playing important roles in fields such as aerosol science, particle technology, and material processing. We develop tailored mathematical models and numerical methods for the complex interaction between flows and particles, as well as for the processing of powders.

    Expertise type(s) (NSERC subjects)
    • 1808 Rheology and processing
    • 2200 FLUID MECHANICS
    • 2202 Multi-phase systems
    • 2203 Modelling, simulation
    • 2953 Wave propagation
    • 2955 Numerical analysis
    • 3109 Acoustics

    Publications

    Featured

    Biography

    Fabian graduated from the University of Stuttgart (Germany) in 2009 with a diploma (Dipl.-Ing.) in Automotive Engineering, which he completed with a thesis at the Laboratory of Thermodynamics in Emerging Technologies at ETH Zurich (Switzerland). During his undergraduate studies, he also worked for Alstom, Porsche and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Fabian then moved to Imperial College London (UK), where he completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2013. His PhD thesis entitled “Balanced-force Two-Phase Flow Modeling on Unstructured and Adaptive Meshes” was awarded the Margaret Fishenden Centenary Memorial Prize 2015 for the best PhD thesis in the previous 5-year period at the Department of Mechanical Engineering. This was followed by a postdoctoral position, also at Imperial College London. In 2015, Fabian secured a prestigious research fellowship from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the UK, with which he continued his research on two-phase flows with surface tension and the corresponding numerical methods for another 3 years at Imperial College London. In 2018, Fabian was appointed Junior Professor of Multiphase Flow Modelling at the Faculty of Process and Systems Engineering of Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Germany). During his time in Magdeburg, Fabian and his group contributed to significant advancements in numerical methods and algorithms to study incompressible and compressible multiphase flows, understanding and utilizing cavitation phenomena, the breakup of inkjets and the atomization of sprays, and nonlinear acoustics. In April 2023, Fabian joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Polytechnique Montréal as an Associate Professor.