Doctoral Candidates
DC 1: Francesco Libretti (NTUA)
Francesco studied at Politecnico di Milano (PoLiMi), Italy. He earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering (2021) and a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering (2023). His studies were mainly focused on aerodynamics and computational fluid dynamics. The title of his master’s thesis is “Passive Control of the Separated Flow Over a Backward-Facing Step by Means of Vortex Generators”. Since September 2023, Francesco works as a Doctoral Candidate of the MFLOPS project and pursues his PhD at the National Technical University of Athens.
Project Title: Development of adjoint methods for isothermal cavitating flows for optimising hydro-turbines.
Objectives: (1) Extension of the in-house GPU-enabled flow solver PUMA by implementing cavitation models for both the steady and unsteady incompressible solver (2) Development and implementation of the steady and unsteady continuous adjoint method for objective functions related to cavitation control/suppression in hydraulic turbines.
DC 2: Spyridon Stalikas (AHS-AT)
Spyros holds an Integrated BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). His work focuses on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Turbomachines. His thesis was on a micropump flow simulation and performance optimization. After graduation, he worked as an R&D engineer in the marine sector and later as a Researcher at NTUA, specializing in multiphase and cavitating flow simulations. Spyros joined Andritz Hydro GmbH in September 2023 as an Early-Stage Researcher of the MFLOPS project while pursuing his PhD at NTUA. His current role involves developing GPU-enabled CFD software for simulating two-phase flows with cavitation modeling, to be used for flow analysis and optimization of hydraulic turbines.
Project Title: Simulation of cavitation erosion and design-optimization of Kaplan turbines
Objectives: (1) Assessment of different cavitation models using a set of available experimental results for Kaplan turbines (2) Design of Kaplan turbines using gradient-free and gradient-based optimization methods, targeting min. cavitation erosion damage.
DC 3: Vasileios Georgopoulos (TUD)
Vassilis graduated from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 2021 with a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering. The subject of his thesis was the development of a novel mesh-deformation method that couples a Radial Basis Function (RBF) network with Quaternions in order to produce higher quality mesh near a deformed solid boundary. After completing his undergraduate studies at NTUA, he enrolled in the Research Master program of the von Karman Institute (VKI) specialising in Turbomachinery and Propulsion department. At VKI his research project focused on the development of an efficient shape optimization algorithm which employs a one-shot approach in order to speed up an existing gradient-based, adjoint code. He currently works as an MFLOPS Doctoral Candidate, pursuing his PhD at Delft University of Technology.
Project Title: Simulation of cavitation and erosion of composite materials and application to marine propellers
Objectives: (1) To develop and validate a coupled RANS-FEM fluid-structure interaction solver for cavitating flows and composite materials used in marine propellers (2) To perform optimisation studies aiming to suppress erosion and noise in marine propellers
DC 4: Mohammadmahdi Nouri
Mohammadmahdi holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Kermanshah University of Technology (KUT) and a Master’s degree in Process Engineering from Tarbiat Modares University (TMU), both of which he received through the Iranian national scholarship program. With three years of experience as an R&D Process Engineer, Mohammadmahdi has worked for AFRA in Tehran and the Iranian Institute of Research and Development in Chemical Industries (IRDCI) in Alborz. His work at AFRA focused on optimizing water and energy usage in greenhouses, while at IRDCI, he was part of the technical process evaluation team in which he oversaw the construction of the oil-drop granulation pilot unit and led the pilot tests for silica gel production as well. Mohammadmahdi’s research interests include the development of hybrid models for design and maintenance purposes. Currently, he is pursuing his PhD as a MSCA Doctoral Fellow for the MFLOPS project at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg.
Project Title: Optimisation methods for estimating fuel-mixture properties
Objectives: (1) To develop a consistent thermodynamic closure model for highly compressible flows, including thermal, wall heat transfer and dissolved air effects. (2) To implement a tabulated approach suitable for incorporation of the model in a density-based flow solver.
DC 5: Antonios Kritikos (TUHH)
Antonios studied Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. He has worked at the marine engineering company Naval-DME, participating in the design and delivery of several ship retrofit projects. His master’s thesis focused on boundary element methods for cavitating hydrofoils. He currently works as a Doctoral Candidate of the MFLOPS project, pursuing a PhD at Hamburg University of Technology.
Project title: Optimisation methods for immiscible two-phase flows
Objectives: (1) To formulate a consistent primal/adjoint two-phase flow model based on a hybridization of a diffuse interface/VoF method inside the FreSCo code, dedicated to continuous adjoint shape optimisation of minimal drag, free floating merchant vessels (2) To extent the approach towards unsteady optimization studies using compressive incremental order reduction techniques and apply them to minimise the added resistance of merchant vessels in seaways.
DC 6: Moloud Arian Maram (VOITH)
Moloud has earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Marine Science and Technology in Marine Engineering in Iran. She obtained her master’s degree from the Naval Architecture Engineering-Ship Hydrodynamics from Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT) in Iran. Her work focuses on fluid mechanics, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and numerical methods. In her master’s thesis, she developed a computer code to study cavitation on a 3D hydrofoil. Moloud worked at Sanat & Darya Shipbuilding in Iran as a welding inspector in the Quality Control Unit (QC) in the Fall of 2016. She has also taught as a lecturer at the University of Marine Science and Technology in the Fall of 2023. Currently, Moloud is pursuing her PhD as an early-stage researcher at VOITH with a degree granted by the Hamburg University of Technology in Germany.
Project Title: Shape optimisation of marine vessels
Objectives: (1) To develop a data-driven approach that enables mesh-independent consideration of propulsion during optimisation studies and implement into the FreSCo software jointly used with DC5. To formulate appropriate objective functionals for power requirement, to derive constraint management capabilities dedicated to industrial marine engineering problems and implement both into the FreSCo software. (2) To apply the enhanced, industrialised shape optimisation method to full-scale self-propelled ship configurations available to Voith.
DC 7: Hamid Teimouri (OVGU)
Hamid obtained his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Kashan, Iran, focusing on Energy Conversion. For his master’s thesis, he developed a CFD code to study convection in an eccentric annulus. Hamid is an interdisciplinary researcher with advanced skills in computational fluid dynamics and experimental methods. Since February 2024, he has been working as a researcher in the MFLOPS project, pursuing his PhD at Otto von Guericke Universität (OVGU) Magdeburg, Germany.
Project Title: Modelling flow in green hydrogen alkaline electrolysers
Objectives: (1) Ultrasound-induced bubble detachment in lab-scale hydrogen electrolysers set-up and validation against experimental data (2) Implementation into mixture flow solver and verification of proof of concept
DC 8: Amin Bekhradinasab (NTUA)
Amin holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology and a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Tehran. His research focused on simulating heat and mass transfer in turbulent flow using open-source CFD software OpenFOAM. Amin has contributed to the field with a publication in the International Communication in Heat and Mass Transfer based on the results of his master’s thesis. He is pursuing a Ph.D. as the Doctoral Candidate 8 at the National Technical University of Athens.
Project Title: Adjoint optimization of cavitating flows with real-fluid equation of state
Objectives: (1) To develop and program a continuous adjoint method targeting cavitation suppression when working with compressible fluid flows and real-fluid state equations. (2) To verify the computed sensitivity derivatives, incorporate the adjoint solver into an optimization workflow and demonstrate its use in optimization loops reducing cavitation in simplified geometries of e-fuel injection processes
DC 9: Sergi Sanchez Gamero (AVL)
Sergi obtained his bachelor’s degree in industrial technologies engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC-ETSEIB) in Spain in 2019. Over the following two years, he gained industrial experience at Vac-Tron, where he worked as a product engineer specializing in the development of Glass-to-Metal seal solutions.
He pursued a double master’s degree in computational mechanics at UPC and Swansea University. His master’s thesis focused on “Intelligent mesh generation for viscous fluid flows using machine learning”. Sergi was awarded the ‘Civil Engineering Ernest Hinton Prize for Outstanding MSc Student’ for his exceptional work during his master’s program. Since September 2023, he is pursuing his PhD within the MFLOPS project at AVL List Graz, with the degree granted by Otto von Guericke Universität Magdeburg.
Project Title: Optimisation of PEM-FC water flow performance and efficiency
Objectives: (1) To develop a numerical modelling approach for the water management in the fuel cell. (2) To couple the numerical model with a non-deterministic algorithm for the optimisation of the design of gas-channels for proton exchange membrane fuel cells.
DC 10: Vishal Garg (AVL)
Vishal earned his bachelor’s degree from PDPM IIITDM Jabalpur in Mechanical Engineering with his thesis on the topic “Numerical analysis of the effect of compressible volume an external inertia on density wave oscillations in multiple heated channels”. He also continued his thesis work in a year-long internship at the IIT Jammu by developing codes to simulate the thermal hydraulic instabilities and the mutual interactions.
He earned his master’s degree in energy engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy, specializing in the power generation field and completed his master thesis at Optimad Srl in Turin on the topic “Mesh morphing for CFD applications”. For this thesis he developed a software tool for mesh morphing using a linear elasticity analogy.
Vishal joined AVL as a PhD student in September 2023 with the degree granted by Otto-von-Guericke-University (OVGU). His research work is related to the development of the adjoint based method for phase change problems and its implementation in the AVL Fire CFD code.
Project title: Optimization of cooling efficiency of BTMS for EVs
Objectives: (1) Derive and implement the adjoint equations for Multiphase flow with heat transfer for optimal design of EV BTMS. (2) To develop an integrated numerical approach for different pool boiling regimes and couple it to adjoint methodology considering the electrochemical effects leading to battery heating.
DC 11: Eduardo Di Costanzo (AHS-CH)
Eduardo earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (UNINA) in Naples, Italy, in 2019 and 2023, respectively. Throughout his studies, he specialized in fluid dynamics and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). His master’s thesis focused on the reduced-order modeling of flow fields around airfoils. In 2022, Eduardo completed a six-month internship at Aerophile in Paris, France, where he contributed to the development of a particulate matter air filter. Currently, Eduardo is a Doctoral Candidate in the MFLOPS project at Andritz Hydro in Vevey, Switzerland, pursuing his Ph.D. at Hamburg University of Technology, Germany.
Project Title: Optimisation of Pelton turbine flows using adjoint SPH
Objectives: (1) To develop a strategy for an efficient reduction of transient SPH-results used by an adjoint-based optimization framework and to formulate an adjoint SPH optimization framework dedicated to optimizing the efficiency for Pelton turbine free-surface flows. (2) To implement the adjoint approach into the ASPHODEL ALE Riemann SPH-flow solver and to validate the method against Finite-Difference studies for Pelton-turbine geometries available to AHS-CH.
DC 12: Evangelos Christianos (CITY)
Evangelos earned his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. The title of his thesis is “An Implicit Grid Displacement Method based on a Rigid Body Motion Model”. He completed an internship at Petros Petropoulos AEBE, dealing with various optimization tasks. Being focused on the sector of Energy Engineering, he is keen in working in the fields of Optimization and CFD analysis and he is interested in the environmental impact of the advancing technologies. Since April 2024, he is an Early-Stage Researcher at the MFLOPS project and pursues his PhD at City, University of London.
Project Title: Optimisation methods for boiling bubble detachment size/frequency
Objectives: a) Simulation model for bubble detachment size and frequency in convective flow, b) Optimised parameters for bubble detachment size/frequency
DC 13: Stratis Trachanias (CITY)
Stratis earned his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in Greece. During his studies he followed the Air and Ground Transport Vehicles track and worked on several projects regarding Fluid Mechanics, Aerodynamics and Mechanical Design. He completed an Internship at Talos Avionics, where he explored light aircraft sensor equipment and he also studied for one semester at Politecnico di Milano as a visiting Erasmus student. In the final year of his studies, he defended his diploma thesis at the Parallel CFD and Optimization Unit of NTUA, where he developed a post processing software tool for Topology Optimization in Fluid Mechanics. Since April 2024, he is an Early-Stage Researcher at the MFLOPS project and pursues his PhD at City, University of London.
Project Title: Optimisation of electrolyser geometry for hydrogen management
Objectives: a) SGS model for droplet formation in the cathode catalyst layer of PEMFC, b) VOF simulations and correlations between air-stream and droplet dynamics in PEMFC
DC 14: Sotirios Damianos (CITY)
Sotirios earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. His studies focused on computational fluid dynamics and aerodynamic optimization techniques. He wrote his master’s thesis on the title “Gradient-based Aerodynamic Shape Optimization Assisted by the Transformation of the Parameterization”. He also worked as an R&D engineer at the SARM Project (Athens) in the compressor design division and as a CFD engineer at BETA-CAE systems. Since December 2023 Sotirios has been working as an Early Stage Researcher of the MFLOPS project pursuing his PhD at City, University of London.
Project Title: Modelling of gaseous-liquid fuel mixture injection
Objectives: (1) To implement a tabulated approach suitable for incorporation in a density-based flow solver. (2) To optimise the design of dual-fuel injectors considering various gaseous-liquid e-fuel combinations.