Research Areas

CFDHub embeds a multiplicity of research areas covered by the research groups making up the inter-departamental laboratory in the field of energy, chemical, bio-engineering, mechanical, fluid mechanic and hydraulic engineering.

All groups involved on CFDHub make use of CFD as main research tool in their field, overall covering a wide range of topics, modeling approaches and scales, from pore to urbane / industrial system/regional scale. Such variety and interconnection of topics and modeling approaches is enabled by the state-of-the-art facilities available at CFDHub, which can handle the most challenging and demanding research in the engineering field.

The research group, belonging to the Department of Energy, aims to develop the academic mission, from research and technology transfer to educational activities, focusing on the fundamental aspects of fluid dynamics and heat transfer. Specifically, with the main goal to improve the capability of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), along with lumped parameter models (LPM), to reproduce and model intrinsically complex phenomena such as turbulence, natural and forced convective heat transfer and multiphase transport in applications of the energy industry, power systems, oil&gas sector, and renewable energy sector.

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The Laboratory of Catalysis and Catalytic Processes (LCCP) is a research group at Department of Energy of Politecnico di Milano that has pioneered multidisciplinary research in the science and engineering of heterogeneous catalysis. In the last decades the research activity of the group has gradually expanded from applications in industrial chemical processes to novel fields associated with energy conversion, environmental protection and sustainable production of chemicals. The mission of LCCP is the education of students via relevant research in the multidisciplinary field of catalysis science, spanning from fundamental research to industrial applications, with a strong connection with the industrial world and world-leading universities and research centers.

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The Internal Combustion Engine Group (ICE Group) is one of several programs at the Dipartimento di Energia of Politecnico di Milano; six faculty members, plus several non-permanent Researchers (Graduate Research Assistants, Ph.D. students and Post-Docs) work together for research projects, advise graduate students, teach courses and write technical/scientific papers and textbooks based on their activities. The group activities focus on the study of combustion, propulsion systems and energy systems; fundamental research involves the study of gasdynamics, combustion and pollutant emissions, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, sprays, chemical kinetics, noise reduction. Models are implemented in advanced one-dimensional (GASDYN) and multi-dimensional (LibICE under the OpenFOAM(R) technology) fluid dynamic numerical codes for the finite volume solution of complex flow problems.

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The Biomechanics Group of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB) of Politecnico di Milano consists of about 30 research fellows including permanent staff, post-docs and PhD students, whose activities cover the fields of patient-specific modeling for diagnosis, patient stratification and surgical planning; molecular biomechanics for diagnosis, drug design, and enzyme engineering; microfluidics for organ-on-chip replica, analysis of pathophysiological cues and drug testing; bioreactor design for tissue and cell engineering. The group runs both computational and experimental activities for academic and translational research; these are developed in five laboratories at Politecnico premises and two laboratories located within two of the major hospitals in the Milan area, i.e., Ospedale Luigi Sacco and Policlinico San Donato IRCCS, where activities are carried out in the tightest collaboration with the hosting institutions and their clinicians.

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The Chemical Reaction Engineering and Chemical Kinetics Lab has a consolidated experience in the the development of detailed and semi-detailed kinetic mechanisms of the pyrolysis, oxidation and combustion of gas, liquid and solids. The group is led by Prof. Tiziano Faravelli and includes 2 full professors, 2 associate professors, 2 assistant professors, 1 post doctoral researcher and several PhD students.

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In the field of safety in the process industries the group deals with the analysis of the consequences of accidents related to emerging risks, such as the dispersion of heavy gases (e.g., Liquefied Natural Gas, LNG) through the modelling with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes.
More recently, the CFALab group is working on switching from Batch to Continuous reactors (Industry 4.0) via modelling and CFD. The final goals are the procedure for the switch, maintaining the same performance, and the design of continuos reactors.
Finally, in the field of Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), the activity of CFALab is related to the multiscale modeling of the whole deposition process, from the elementary reactions taking place in the gas phase and at the material growth interface, to the modeling of defect formation, to the fluid dynamic simulations of the whole reactor. The CFALab has given key contributions for the understanding of the kinetics and the reactor design for the CVD of Si, SiC, GaN, and AlGaAs.

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MPM is a research group of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Our research aims at building innovative theoretical and operational approaches to improve our ability to predict and control flow and transport dynamics in natural and industrial porous systems. Research topics includes: reactive contaminant transport and variable density flow, pore and continuum scale modeling, multi-scale characterization of heterogeneous porous and fractured media, uncertainty quantification and stochastic modeling calibration. Typical applications include groundwater flow and contaminant transport in aquifers and soils, reservoir engineering, enhanced oil recovery and sea-water intrusion in coastal aquifers.

The Department of Aerospace Science and Technology (DAER) has a long tradition in developing and using advanced computational methods for Aerospace Engineering. The Computational Aerospace Engineering Lab (CAERO Lab) at DAER is comprised of a multidisciplinary group of faculty and students who conduct research in the field of Computational Engineering. CAERO aims at fostering innovative solutions for advanced problems, to be applied both in a research and in an industrial context, and to transfer the developed computational technologies to everyday problems.
CAERO Lab’s activity is focused on the development and application of advanced software, either open-source or commercial, on leadership class machines. Fields of application are the study of aerodynamics, fluid mechanics and turbulence, combustion, structural mechanics and aeroservoelasticity, space exploration and orbital mechanics, flight mechanics, wind turbines.