Interdisciplinary Dialogue
Flow Simulations Across Scales: From Atoms to Vortices
Professor Marina Krstic Marinkovic from ETH Zurich will interview Professor Jens Honore Walther from the Technical University of Denmark.
Most phenomena in fluid dynamics are most naturally described by considering the fluid as a collection of particles: Lagrangian elements that carry the properties of the flow and whose motion describes the evolution of the system. The discrete representations range from atomistic models of nano scale systems, to granular and dispersed flow, to continuum models including vortex particle methods and smooth particle hydrodynamics. These methods serve as accurate and efficient tools for fundamental studies in fluid dynamics. For general engineering problems with flows in complex geometries and subject to a multitude of physical processes Eulerian methods prevail. Examples from flow simulations across scales include carbon nanotube membranes bluff body aerodynamics, gravity waves, and combustion.
Full recording available here.
Plenary Speakers
Marina Krstic Marinkovic is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computational Physics at ETH since February 2021. Prior to joining ETH, she held faculty positions at Trinity College Dublin and LMU Munich, and CERN’s senior fellowship. Her research explores the interplay between lattice QCD and lattice QED analytically and numerically, through algorithms optimized to run efficiently on HPC infrastructures. In addition to first principle predictions from QFTs, she develops novel algorithms for strong interaction that bring together exascale classical computing and quantum computing on NISQ devices, recently recognized by the Google Faculty Research Award.
Jens Honore Walther is a professor in computational fluid dynamics at the Technical University of Denmark and until 2023 a research associate at the Computational Science and Engineering Laboratory at ETH Zurich. His research spans length scales from nano to kilometers — from numerical studies of capillarity in nanofluidic systems to bluff body aerodynamics of suspension bridges. He worked on multiscale modelling at ETH Zurich coupling atomistic and continuum descriptions of fluid flow. Recently, the green transition has guided his research towards combustion of alternative fuels in large marine engines and wave energy converters.