Numerical modelling of non-Newtonian rising bubbles

Although significant advances have been made in non-Newtonian fluids and multiphase flows, a better understanding of the non-Newtonian fluids in multiphase flows, especially shear-thinning fluids, remain to be elucidated. This PhD project will focus on research in the areas of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for non-Newtonian interfacial and multiphase flows, which appear in many environmental & industrial applications.

The project will explore the use of several constitutive laws for viscoelastic fluids and a sophisticated 3D computational model will be developed that will be based on an adaptive unstructured mesh modelling framework, which can modify and adapt unstructured meshes to better represent the underlying physics of multiphase problems and reduce computational effort without sacrificing accuracy.

The project is relevant to several EPSRC priority areas: such as Fluid Dynamics and Aerodynamics; Complex Fluid & Rheology; Coastal and Waterway Engineering; Mathematical Physics; Numerical Analysis etc