1.5 million euro for research on fluid dynamics

The money from the European Research Council (ERC) goes to the Smartfluids project. Principal investigator is Guang Yin, researcher at the Department of Mechanical and Structural Engineering and Materials Science. Smartfluids is about fluid dynamics and so-called fluid-structure interactions (FSI). They describe the interaction of some movable or deformable structure with an internal or surrounding fluid flow. The aim of the project is to develop an improved method for modeling fluid flow around objects.

How to predict fluid flows?

"FSI is an important term in areas such as marine technology, biomedicine and engineering in general. It is difficult to describe how fluid flows around or inside an object, especially when it comes to turbulent flows. This could be, for example, blood flowing in blood vessels, wind blowing on a wind turbine or water flowing past a structure in the sea. If the interactions between flow and structure are strongly non-linear, it poses major challenges for the understanding of these systems. It becomes difficult to model the fluid flows," explains Yin.

He uses an image:

"It's like telling blind people how to recognize an elephant."

The Smartfluids research project aims to develop good modeling tools that are less resource-intensive than today's, but still give precise results. The researchers have to reduce the complexity of the mathematical models they use.

"Such a tool will give us a deep understanding and at the same time efficient calculation of the fluid flow," says Guang Yin.

"More importantly, the method will predict the physics of FSIs using measurements that we usually get from experiments in the laboratory. In that way, we can upscale the results from small to large," he says.

Energy from wind and water

Guang Yin has been employed as a researcher at the University of Stavanger since 2018. Head of Department Mona W. Minde at the Department of Mechanical and Structural Engineering and Materials Science is excited to follow his project in the coming years.

"We are very happy that Guang Yin has been awarded such a prestigious research project. Modeling of currents is important to be able to make calculations of, among other things, loads on structures and how to create the most efficient design possible to extract energy from wind and water," says Minde.

Yin implements artificial intelligence into the modeling tool using new deep learning techniques and using FSI physics in the deep learning neural network.

"In this way, we can easily predict dynamics and future loads from water or wind on the structures. Smartfluids will provide an innovative and systematic picture of this interaction," believes the young researcher.

The result of the work will be a simulation tool that can be used in everything from the design of pipelines, cables and wind turbine blades, to developing renewable energy. The technology is transferable to various complex systems in fields such as climate, neuroscience and epidemiology.

"High performance computing tools are very expensive. The aim is to reduce time and costs in numerical fluid dynamics and to promote the development of renewable technology," concludes Yin.

3,474 European researchers competed for the funds this year. Of these, 494 applications receive funding. This gives a success rate of 14.2 percent. In the technology and natural sciences category, 209 applications were granted by the ERC. Only six Norwegian projects received support - three at the University of Oslo, one at the University of Bergen and one at UiT Norway's Arctic University, in addition to Yin's project.

"I greatly appreciate all the support from colleagues at the research department at UiS. They helped me find a mentor, read through the application, as well as organizing several mock interviews to prepare me for the final interview with the European Research Council," says Yin.

In Guang Yin's project, two doctoral fellows and one postdoctoral fellow will be employed.

Text and photo: Kjersti Riiber