Solid particles carried along in a fluid flow: physical fundamentals, measurement techniques, and modelling frameworks in an application-oriented view. The MOOC, developed in the context of a collaborative research project, will provide an application-oriented yet theoretically rigorous overview of particle-laden flows, i.e., two-phase flows of solid particles within a carrier fluid (liquid or gas). These flows are encountered in many engineering fields, including but not limited to the mining industry, the oil & gas industry, and the hydraulic engineering.
Students attending this course will learn how particle-laden flows can be characterized from a physical and engineering point of view, and they will be able to decide the most appropriate approach for handling these flows at the design level, including different techniques for the numerical simulation as well as the physical testing in laboratory setups. After discussing these aspects in a general framework, special attention will be paid to two phenomena of considerable industrial impact, namely, the liquid-solid transport in pipelines and the damage produced by the travelling solids on pipeline components and hydraulic equipment.
As an appendix to the course, a number of case studies will highlight the importance of particle-laden flows in academic research and engineering practice. As well as by the partners of the project, these case studies have been gratefully provided by Francisco Souza & Carlos Antonio Ribeiro Duarte (Federal University of Uberlândia, Brazil), François Avellan & Sebastián Leguizamón (EPFL-LMH, Switzerland), Magdalena Walczak & Javiera Aguirre (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), Giacomo Nutricato & Simone Gorini (ENI S.p.A., Italy), Harry Claydon & Mike Malin (CHAM – Concentration Heat and Momentum, UK), Thomas Senfter (MCI – The Entrepreneurial School, Austria).
You can access the course free of charge and completely online.
The MOOC is made up of five weeks; the estimated effort is about 5 hours/week to learn the basic concepts. However, in order to fully achieve the learning outcomes, at least further 10 hours per week of individual study is also recommended, yielding a total estimated effort of about 15 hours per week.
