PhD-Positions in Fluid Mechanics

Two PhD-Positions in Fluid Mechanics Related to Kiln Aerodynamics and Porous Media Flow

The Division of Fluid Mechanics at the Department of Applied Physics and Mechanical Engineering, Luleå University of Technology is offering four PhD-positions in Fluid Mechanics related to Kiln aerodynamics and Porous media flow. The students will work in an exiting and growing environment using the latest techniques within the area of fluid mechanics and with the possibility to develop contacts world-wide within as well industry as academy. The division is putting great effort on the working environment and to improve the research education. The division has furthermore a fairly good gender balance and in order to keep this we encourage females as well as males to apply. All positions will also imply that contacts are taken world-wide through, for instance, meetings, conferences and longer stays abroad.


Qualifications

The PhD candidates should have 240 credits of which 60 credits on an advanced level within Mechanical engineering, Applied physics, Civil engineering or equivalent. The candidates should also be excellent in written and oral communication in Swedish or in English. Knowledge about CFD and/or advanced measuring techniques such as LDV or PIV is a merit as well as a high quality and relevant student diploma work. Knowledge of the Swedish language can also be of importance since part of the work will be carried out in close co-operation with industry. A short description of the project will now follow

Kiln Aerodynamics, 2 students (Ref. no. 188-09)

Manufacturing science enables a reduction of production costs, maintenance costs and environmental impact. As demands from the customer increases advanced tools have to be used in this process. One such tool, that is nowadays quite commonly used, is Computation Fluid Dynamics, CFD. The challenge is, however, to perform efficient and trustful simulations on complicated cases such as the flow in rotating kilns used in the production of iron ore pellets. The flow before, within and after the kiln is multifaceted involving a highly turbulent high temperature flow with chemical reactions in intricate geometries with moving parts. Thus, a number of tools and means need to be applied to reach goals such as extremely high and stable quality, ultra low NOx emissions and low energy consumption. The aim with these two PhD-projects is to contribute to these quests by developing methodologies that can be used to carry out trustful CFD simulations of the flow before, within and after the kiln. The methodologies that results will also be used to optimize the process. The actual work will imply that the PhD-students built up knowledge about the physics behind kiln aerodynamics, CFD and optimisation methodologies as well as about experimental work in lab- and full scale. The projects will be carried out in close co-operation with LKAB who are partly financing the projects.