Research Themes

The research in the UBC-Okanagan CFD Lab consists of the following themes. Within these broad themes are current or future research interests:

Turbomachinery aerodynamics

  • Instability and transition of planar free shear layers
  • Noise reduction in bypass turbofan engines
  • Laminar-to-turbulent transition in turbomachinery

Wind energy

  • Wind turbine aerodynamics
  • Wind farm blockage
  • Wind farm wake modelling
  • Wake recovery and wake/wake interactions between neighbouring farms
  • Turbine icing

Healthy and efficient buildings

  • Computational modelling of transition under conditions of natural convection
  • Dispersion of pollutants in indoor environments

Hydrogen energy systems

  • Solid-state hydrogen storage
  • Cryogenic liquid hydrogen modelling
  • Hydrogen blending into natural gas
  • Hydrogen-blended natural gas detonation/flammability

Human/atmosphere interactions

  • Simulation of accidental gas release
  • Modelling the dispersion of forest-fire smoke
  • Dispersion of gases and particles in urban and agricultural environments

Biomedical computation

  • Turbulence-resolving simulations of heart valves, aneurysms
  • Respiration and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
  • Airborne-disease transmission in health care environments (link to Eminence cluster)