Highly accurate algorithms for flow simulation
Florian Kummer awarded Prize of the Adolf Messer Foundation 2017
2018/01/17 by MI-Nr. 02/2018, kummer/map
He has achieved a leading position in the development of high order, high accurate flow simulation methods: Dr. Florian Kummer from the Institute for Fluid Dynamics (Department of Mechanical Engineering) has been awarded the Prize of the Adolf Messer Foundation 2017. The award, which comes with € 50,000 prize money, is the most important award for research projects at the TU Darmstadt.
Dr.-Ing. Florian Kummer focuses on computational fluid dynamics (CFD), for example, the simulation of multi-phase flows. The standard simulation algorithms used in industrial CFD applications today are based on fundamentals that were developed 50 years ago. Since then, they have been perfected but their accuracy is limited. Dr. Kummer investigates high order discontinuous Galerkin methods, which are considerably more accurate and much better suited for upcoming supercomputer architectures. Such highly accurate simulation technologies are the key to overcoming today’s and future engineering challenges.
Flows are more than the sum of their parts
For example, the construction of a wind farm costs about one to three billion Euros. During the design of such a plant, it is mandatory to assess the amount of electrical energy that can be harvested. What complicates this estimation is that the wind turbines interact with each other – each row of wind turbines lies in the turbulent wake behind its previous row, which in turn influences the performance. Thus, the wind farm as a whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Dr. Kummers research, which especially focuses on exploiting modern simulation methods for industrial applications, is a valuable contribution to improve the understanding of complex thermo-fluid systems and thus improve their efficiency and performance.
The 36-year old scientist obtained his PhD degree in early 2012 with distinction. He received the PhD Award of the Graduate School of Computational Engineering and was elected as GAMM Junior – a prestigious award by the International Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics. Since 2015, after a two-year research stay at Stanford University and in subsequence at Rice University Houston, USA, he heads the research group “Numerical Methods and Simulations” at the Institute for Fluid Dynamics.
The award
The Prize of the Adolf Messer Foundation is awarded annually for the promotion of research and teaching to early career researchers with outstanding achievement in the field of natural sciences, engineering and economic sciences, social sciences and the humanities. It is endowed with € 50,000.
