The Vagaries of Complex Systems
Prof. Raffaella Ocone
Heriot-Watt University - Edinburgh (GB)
Monday, December, 18th
h. 11.00
Room TA05 (Via Terracini 28)
Abstract: Complex systems often show a behaviour that defies common sense, posing significant modelling challenges. The talk explores current work undertaken by the Multiphase Multiscale Engineering Modelling group at Heriot-Watt University in the area of the hydrodynamics of granular and particle laden flow. Existing theories for particulate flow lack the robustness, predictability and flexibility required to handle the totality of phenomena that such flow may exhibit. Some unwanted industrial issues (such as particle agglomeration) and their management still remain an “art” with current practice based mainly on ad-hoc models and on operator’s experience. Many complicated phenomena happen at the meso-scale, the scale between the “small” and “large” scales: as an example, clusters and agglomerates are formed at the length scale between particle size and equipment size. The modelling efforts to describe the meso-scale, as well as the experimental work needed to understand the meso-scale behaviour, are discussed. A case study in the area of energy conversion is presented in detail and additional applications of the developed modelling framework are discussed and its extensions analysed.