CREA Team



The laboratory of Compressible-fluid dynamics for Renewable Energy Applications (CREA) support theoretical, experimental and numerical investigations of compressible-fluid flows for renewable energy applications. Research activities include experimental work in the Test-Rig for Organic VApors (TROVA, commissioned in 2013), the design of the Supercritical CO2 for the PRocess Industry test-rig (SCO2PRI) and the development of a number of software tools for non-ideal fluid flows: the Fluidprop thermodynamic library (www.fluidprop.com), the dense-gas branch of the SU2 CFD solver (su2.stanford.com), the PoliMIce suite for ice accretion, the code RGND for nozzle design in non-ideal conditions and the FlowMesh CFD solver (www.aero.polimi.it/flowmesh).

Faculty
Research Associate and PhD candidates
Visiting scholar
Master students
CREA Alumni


Faculty



Alberto Guardone 


Associate professor at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology
Politecnico di Milano 

Head of the laboratory for Compressible-fluid dynamics for Renewable Energy (CREA)

ERC Consolidator Grantee 2013

My research interests include the theoretical, numerical and experimental investigation of non-ideal compressible-fluid dynamics (NICFD). In particular, I am interested in the observation of so-called non-classical gas dynamics wave-fields in the vapour phase of complex organic compounds and in the near-critical region of pure, common substances. I am the recipient of a ERC Consolidator Grant 2013, aimed at performing unique measurements of NCIFD in the Test-Rig for Organic Vapours (TROVA) facility in Milano, and I am currently collaborating to the FAST experiment at TU Delft. I contributed to the development of the NICFD solvers FlowMesh and zFlow. I helped coding the non-ideal thermodynamics interface in SU2 and in particular the boundary condition for NICFD simulations.


Andrea Spinelli


Assistant professor at the Energy Department of Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

My activities include the experimental analysis of flows in turbomachines, the development of measuring techniques for fluid-dynamics, the design and the analysis of thermodynamic cycles and turbines, especially for ORC applications, and the gasdynamics of real-gases.
Within the CREA laboratory group I am in charge for experiments in dense-gas flows and I am responsible of the TROVA facility.

Fabio Cozzi


Assistant professor at the Energy Department of Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

My research interests, among others: the experimental investigation of reactive and non-reactive flows in burners and combustors by means of PIV/LDV techniques, the experimental analysis of efficiency and flame stability in meso-scale (some millimeters) and laboratory-scale combustors and the development of optical techniques for fluid-dynamics and combustion.
Within the CREA laboratory group I am in charge for the development of the optical techniques for the dense-gas flows and their implementation in the TROVA facility.

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Research Associate and PhD candidates





Marta Zocca

Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology
Politecnico di Milano

My doctoral thesis regards the design of supersonic nozzle operating in the non-classical regime. I am using SU2 to verify the design of the real-gas nozzle of the Test-Rig for Organic VApours (TROVA) facility at Politecnico di Milano. In the experiment, supersonic steady flows of dense gases are observed for the first time.
My contributions include the design and the virtual and experimental calibration of pressure probes to be operated in the dense gas regime. I will use SU2 to simulate the the aerodynamic behavior and the dynamic response of the probe.

Barbara Re

Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology
Politecnico di Milano

My research activity is mainly focused on the investigation of under-expanded jet flows. In order to characterise the flow structure downstream the nozzle exit section, numerical simulations are carried out in different operating conditions.
I use the software SU2 for both the assessment of the flow structure and the validation of ad hoc design and simulations tools that I am developing for such flows.

Luuc Keulen

Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology
Politecnico di Milano

My Ph.D activity regards the study and the development of new theoretical models for estimating thermodynamics and physics properties of fluid mixtures.
In particular I am working on mixtures of fluids characterized by high molecular complexity which are so promising for ORC applications.
I am also responsible for the design of the SUONA (?) experimental test rig for measuring thermodynamics properties of mixtures and of pure fluid.

Davide Vimercati

Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology
Politecnico di Milano

I'm currently working on the development of exact solution for non-classical flows in converging-diverging nozzles, starting from the Van der Waals equation of state.
I'm using SU2, taking advantage of its interface to the general-purpose thermodynamic library FluidProp, to conduct numerical validations of the theoretical model and for a comparison to the ideal gas exact solution.


Giorgia Cammi

Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Energy
Politecnico di Milano

The aim of my Ph.D. research is to characterize organic vapour flows inside supersonic nozzles. 
Currently I am working on the development of a LDV (Laser Doppler Velocimetry) test-rig. This experimental set up will be used to carry on experiments regarding non-ideal flows produced by means of the TROVA (Test-Rig for Organic VApours) facility.
Independent measure of pressure, temperature and velocity inside the flow-field will be compared to the result produced by computational analysis tools, in particular CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation provided by SU2.



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Visiting scholars


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Master student



Luca Virtuani

MSc student at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology
Politecnico di Milano



My Master thesis regards virtual Schlieren visualization in real gas flows near the critical point and the liquid-vapour saturation curve. In these conditions, compressibility is highly non-ideal and its influence on density-based visualization unknown. I'm currently working on the development of a post-processing interface for SU2 to produce three-dimensional virtual Schlieren visualization of the flow field in exemplifying geometry such as converging-diverging nozzles and wedges. Indeed relevant fluid properties are very hard to determine in real-gas conditions conditions: this properties include for example the Gladstone-Dale constant for the computation of the refraction index.


Luca Angelucci

MSc student at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology
Politecnico di Milano



My graduating project regards the Schlieren visual technique applied to non-classical fluid flows.
The aim of my work is to produce the first Schlieren images of an organic fluid flowing at supersonic speed in critical conditions.
In particular my attention is focused on the behaviour of linear and cyclic siloxanes with special regard devoted to MDM (octamethyltrisiloxane).
The thermodynamic state of the fluid during the experiment is close to the critical point so that non-ideal gas dynamics effects should arise.
Great effort is currently spent on the improvement of ordinary Schlieren test-rig layout in order to optimize the system for capturing images of non-ideal flows.
Beside the experimental side, I'm also making an extensive use of SU2 CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) real gas solver in order to assess the expected fluid behaviour.




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