Section: New Results

Complex fluids

Participants : Sébastien Boyaval, Dena Kazerani.

The aim of the research performed in the project-team about complex fluids is

• to guide the mathematical modeling with PDEs of real materials flows, multi-phase fluids such as suspensions of particles or stratified air-water flows in particular, and

• to propose efficient algorithms for the computation of flow solutions, mainly for the many applications in the hydraulic engineering context.

Concerning the first point, new results have been obtained in collaboration with A. Caboussat (HEG, Switzerland) and M. Picasso (EPFL, Switzerland), in the framework of the SEDIFLO project (funded by ANR) and of Arwa Mrad PhD thesis at EPFL. In [13], they have shown numerically inability of some classical incompressible density-dependent Navier-Stokes equations to take into account some multiphase concentration effects in a prototypical set-up of fluvial erosion (in comparison with physical experiments). Hence the need for new models, that better describe complex flows associated with heterogeneities in the fluid microstructure. Concerning the second point, new results have been obtained in collaboration with M. Grepl and K. Veroy (Aachen, Germany) regarding the numerical reduction of transport models for data assimilation [25], in the framework of M. Kaercher PhD thesis at Aachen.