Nano-Engineered Flow Technologies: Simulation for Design across Scale and Phase

Over the next 25 years, society will face major challenges in health, transportation, energy and climate that will demand novel engineering solutions. Recent rapid advances in device and materials fabrication offer an important opportunity to help meet these challenges by enabling new technologies to be engineered down to the nanometre scale. Devices that manipulate fluids at the smallest scales exhibit complex and sometimes counter-intuitive phenomena that present novel scientific and technological opportunities. The scientific opportunity is to understand and model how the microscopic physics at and around phase interfaces drives the overall flow behaviour. The technological opportunity is to exploit this behaviour to design and manufacture devices with unprecedented capabilities. This research Programme is about uncovering the engineering science of flows that are intrinsically multiscale, and encapsulating this in efficient modelling software in order to enable the design of next generation technologies.

This Programme aims to underpin future UK innovation in nano-structured and smart interfaces by delivering a simulation-for-design capability for nano-engineered flow technologies, as well as a better understanding of the critical interfacial fluid dynamics. We will produce software that a) resolves interfaces down to the molecular scale, and b) spans the scales relevant to the engineering application. As accurate molecular/particle methods are computationally unfeasible at engineering scales, and efficient but conventional fluids models do not capture the important molecular physics, this is a formidable multiscale problem in both time and space. Our software will have embedded intelligence that decides dynamically on the correct simulation tools needed at each interface location, for every phase combination, and matches these tools to appropriate computational platforms for maximum efficiency.

The outcome will be a revolutionary new framework for simulating multiscale multiphysics systems in nature as well as engineering, greatly surpassing current modelling capabilities. The step-change advances this represents include:
- predictive simulations of engineering-scale systems with nanoscale fidelity;
- new insight into the physics of interfacial flow systems;
- computational resources allocated in-simulation to enable more rapid system analysis;
- assessment of proposed flow system designs that were not previously amenable to investigation;
- accessing trans-disciplinary applications in granular flows and avalanche dynamics, and social/economic systems including urban traffic modelling and financial market stability.

This work is strongly supported by 9 external partners, ranging from large multinational companies to an SME. The targeted applications all depend on the behaviour of interfaces that divide phases, and include: radical cancer treatments that exploit nano-bubble cavitation; the cooling of high-power electronics through evaporative nano-menisci; nanowire membranes for separating oil and water, e.g. for oil spills; and smart nano-structured surfaces for drag reduction and anti-fouling, with applications to low-emissions aerospace, automotive and marine transport. These applications make demands on simulation for engineering design that far outstrip current capabilities. Our partners will therefore be 'early-adopters' of this Programme's outcomes in order to meet the technical capabilities they will need to provide in the future.

This interdisciplinary research draws on techniques and results across the boundaries of applied mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering, and computing. Its timeliness lies in the convergence of a uniquely-qualified academic team with a group of engaged and committed industrial partners, who will work together to exploit current and emerging nano-engineered flow systems for societal and economic benefit to the UK and elsewhere.

Impact from this Programme will be academic, industrial, environmental and societal. Encapsulating multiscale interfacial fluid dynamics within a tractable design methodology presents an important direct benefit to UK industry and manufacturing: by enabling nano-engineered flow design, new technologies with unprecedented capabilities can be devised, which have clear long-term industrial and societal potential. These include emissions reduction, new disease treatments, future telecoms, and other applications that will contribute to the sustainability of our environment and our standard of living. This Programme will deliver a sequence of targeted outcomes to user communities, ranging from predictive software tools to design guidelines. Impact routes range from academic publications in international journals, to training courses for industrial partners, and the design of tangible prototypes out of our research.

Academic beneficiaries will gain from the new light this Programme will shed on flow physics at the micro and nano scales. Additional academic impact will arise from the generic nature of our simulation techniques, which will benefit researchers in other Research Council-supported streams (e.g. chemical/biological molecular modelling) from pure (e.g. maths) to applied (e.g. thin-film cooling of turbomachinery, nano fuel-cell technologies). We will also target completely new applications for our multiscale analysis, from geotechnical engineering to population dynamics, making this a truly interdisciplinary Programme.

Direct non-academic beneficiaries over the medium- to long-term (i.e. 3-15 years) will be our 9 external partners, who will be early-adopters of Programme outcomes as they have identified clear long-term potential in this research for the technical capabilities they will need to provide to customers in the future:
- Bell Labs, on nanoscale cooling technologies for next generation computer networking;
- AkzoNobel and Jaguar Land Rover, on nano-structured surface treatments for marine and road vehicles;
- Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering, on targeted drug delivery using engineered nano-particles;
- Waters, on developing new mass spectrometers with unprecedented sensitivity;
- Airbus Group, on active drag control for aircraft;
- ESA, on the fundamental science of evaporating droplets and boiling;
- NPL, on multiphase flow in porous materials, and biological phenomena;
- TotalSim Ltd, on state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics software and training.

Programme activities to engage with these and other external beneficiaries to maximise impact include:
1) Two-way secondments of key personnel from external partners and the Programme to gain first-hand experience of industrial priorities and research challenges, to identify mutual research opportunities, and to train partners in the software tools we develop.
2) Participation of the external partners in our Steering & Impact Committee, providing advice and support to the Programme sub-projects.
3) In-Programme training of research personnel who will then be able to work to sustain UK efforts long-term in this field in government laboratories, industry (including our external partners), or academia.
4) Using Knowledge Transfer Networks, Catapults, and other networks as platforms to share knowledge on technological opportunities arising from the research.

New external beneficiaries will be actively sought as the Programme progresses. Producing insight into interfacial fluid dynamics, and releasing our software open-source where possible, will accelerate the development of future multiscale technologies, beyond any currently conceived. As a flagship for British engineering science, this Programme helps make a compelling case to the public and government for continued investment in leading-edge UK engineering.