M. Sc. Lu, Xiang
M.Sc. Xiang Lu
Research topic
Continuum model parameters for drying porous media estimated from pore network simulations
Supervisor
Brief Resume
born 1992 in Jixi, China
Academic background
| Since November 2016 | PhD Student, Chair of Thermal Process Engineering, Member of the Research Training Group 1554 "Micro-Macro Interactions in Structured Media and Particle Systems" |
| October 2014 - June 2016 | MSc. Chemical Energy and Engineering, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg Thesis: Frequency response analysis of oxygen reduction reaction using electrical and non-electrical periodic inputs |
| September 2010 - June 2014 | BSc. Polymer Materials and Engineering, Nanjing Institution of Technology, Nanjing, China Thesis: Preparation and characterization of starch-based carbon foams |
Research Project
Scale transition from discrete to continuous models for drying of porous media To describe the dynamics of drying porous media, several mathematical models with various degrees of complexity and accuracy have been developed. At the effective medium scale, a continuum approximation is used and the transport phenomena are described by a set of partial differential equations. The major difficulty of these models is their requirement of macroscopic transport parameters, which are averages of corresponding microscopic properties and are often determined by experiments. On the other hand, to provide a detailed picture and a fundamental understanding on the pore-scale phenomena in drying capillary porous media, the mesoscale approach by discrete pore network modeling has been germane to many research groups including ours for more than a decade, and still is a subject of ongoing studies.
The aim of this project is to utilized three-dimensional pore network simulations, which serve as numerical experiments, to estimate macroscopic parameters of interest for multiple realizations of the pore space with different geometries. The parameters estimated in this way shall be used to assess the “goodness” of any chosen continuous model. Moving beyond this goal, another aspect in this project is to accelerate the pore network simulations for large three-dimensional networks in order to make this simulation tool available and useful for technical applications in product and process design.