Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Funded Australia-Germany joint research project

    Funded Australia-Germany joint research project

    Our team will be funded under Australia-Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme between Universities Australia and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The project will enable us to work closely with the research team from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology on multi-scale modelling of Li-ion batteries in the coming 2 years (2019-2020). The project title is “A microstructure…

  • Congratulations to Si Suo for the poster award

    Congratulations to Si Suo for the poster award

    Last week, Mr Si Suo won the second prize for Student Research Poster Event 2018 at School of Civil Engineering. Si is a first year PhD student working on multiphase flow in heterogeneous porous media. Congratulations to Si!

  • Mari won the poster prize at SOFT2018 conference

    Mari won the poster prize at SOFT2018 conference

    Mrs Marigrazia Moscardini won the poster prize at the 30th Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT 2018)  held in Giardini Naxos (Messina, Sicily) for presenting a joint work between Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and The University of Sydney on fusion materials, with the title of “Discrete element code to simulate the heat transfer inside ceramic breeder…

  • Paper accepted (Transport in Porous Media) on modelling imbibition

    Paper accepted (Transport in Porous Media) on modelling imbibition

    Suo, S., Liu, M., Gan, Y. (2018) Modelling imbibition processes in heterogeneous porous media. Transport in Porous Media. In press.  [DOI] Imbibition is a commonly encountered multiphase problem in various fields, and exact prediction of imbibition processes is a key issue for better understanding capillary flow in heterogeneous porous media. In this work, a numerical framework for…

  • Paper online (Transport in Porous Media) on liquid patches

    Paper online (Transport in Porous Media) on liquid patches

    Li, S., Liu, M., Hanoar, D., Gan, Y. (2018) Dynamics of Viscous Entrapped Saturated Zones in Partially Wetted Porous Media. Transport in Porous Media. In press. [DOI] As a typical multiphase fluid flow process, drainage in porous media is of fundamental interest both in nature and in industrial applications. During drainage processes in unsaturated soils and porous…

  • Paper online (Colloids and Surfaces A) on contact angle hysteresis

    Paper online (Colloids and Surfaces A) on contact angle hysteresis

    Shi, Z., Zhang, Y., Liu, M., Hanoar, D., Gan, Y. (2018) Dynamic contact angle hysteresis in liquid bridges. Colloids and Surfaces A. 555:365-371. [DOI][PDF:059_CSA_2018] This work presents an experimental study of dynamic contact angle hysteresis using liquid bridges under cyclic compression and stretching between two identical plates. Under various loading rates, contact angle hystereses for three different…

  • Yanyao completed MPhil degree

    Yanyao completed MPhil degree

    Congratulations to Mr Yanyao Bao! Yanyao recently completed his MPhil degree with a thesis entitled “Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Simulations for Dynamic Capillary Interactions”. The review reports were excellent. Yanyao is currently working towards an application for further PhD study at The University of Sydney.

  • Best Student Paper Awards (ACCM3) by Yanyao Bao and Si Suo

    Best Student Paper Awards (ACCM3) by Yanyao Bao and Si Suo

    In February 2018, Yanyao and Si presented their research on the 3rd Australasian Conference on Computational Mechanics (ACCM3) hosted by Deakin University, and were both selected as “Best Student Paper Awards”. Congratulations! Well done! [1] Yanyao Bao, Ling Li, Luming Shen, and Yixiang Gan (2018), A modified smoothed particle hydrodynamics formulation for dynamic contact angles. The 3rd…

  • Congrats to Dr. Zhai

    Congrats to Dr. Zhai

    Chongpu has successfully passed the thesis examination and recently received the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering and Information Technologies) at the University of Sydney. His PhD dissertation entitled “Stress-dependent Electrical Conduction in Granular Materials” can be downloaded here via [PDF]. Dr Zhai (photo below) has joined Johns Hopkins University as a Postdoctoral researcher. We…

  • Paper online (Int J Heat and Mass Transfer) on capillary penetration

    Paper online (Int J Heat and Mass Transfer) on capillary penetration

    Liu, M., Wu, J., Gan, Y., Hanaor, D., Chen, C.Q. (2018) Tuning capillary penetration in porous media: combining geometrical and evaporation effects. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer. 123:239-250. [DOI][PDF:051_IJHMT_2018] Abstract: Capillary penetration of liquids in porous media is of great importance in many applications and the ability to tune such penetration processes is increasingly sought…

  • Paper online (Fusion Eng. Design) on thermal DEM with Smoluchowski effect

    Paper online (Fusion Eng. Design) on thermal DEM with Smoluchowski effect

    Moscardini, M., Gan, Y., Pupeschi, S., Kamlah, M. (2018) Discrete element method for effective thermal conductivity of packed pebbles accounting for the Smoluchowski effect. Fusion Engineering and Design. 127: 192-201. [DOI][PDF:050_FED_2018] Highlights • A thermal DEM code is proposed for the evaluation of the effective thermal conductivity of ceramic breeder pebble beds. • The Smoluchowski effect…

  • Conference papers on iCGMGE

    The following conference papers have been presented by the research students at 1st International Conference on Geomechanics and Geoenvironmental Engineering (iCGMGE), 20-22 November, 2017, Sydney. [1] Yanyao Bao, Ling Li, Luming Shen, and Yixiang Gan, Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Simulations for Hysteretic Behaviours of Capillary Interactions. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Geomechanics and Geoenvironmental Engineering (iCGMGE),…

  • IWMEM2017 Workshop, Suzhou, China

    IWMEM2017 Workshop, Suzhou, China

    The Second International Workshop on Mechanics of Energy Materials (IWMEM2017) has been successfully hosted at The University of Sydney Centre in China, 8-11 November, 2o17. The workshop contained 27 technical presentations, regarding a wide range of research on challenging engineering problems in energy systems (nuclear fusion / fission, batteries, and photovoltaic systems), and 45 participants…

  • Honour thesis student awarded with poster prize

    Honour thesis student awarded with poster prize

    Mr Xu Wang, an honour thesis student working on numerical modelling of capillary forces between rough interfaces in our group, has been awarded with John Main 2nd Prize for Poster Presentation event on 3 November, 2017. The Poster Presentation 2017 is the School of Civil Engineering’ major annual event to showcase the research undertaken by…

  • Chongpu and Shuoqi submitted their theses

    In the past few weeks, Mr Chongpu Zhai has just submitted his PhD thesis titled “Stress-dependent electrical conduction in granular materials” to summarise his PhD work from 2014. Ms Shuoqi (Sharon) Li has also submitted her MPhil thesis titled “The distribution of saturated clusters in wetted granular materials” for the research conducted in the past…

  • Paper online (Int J Mech Sci) on contact mechancis

    Paper online (Int J Mech Sci) on contact mechancis

    Zhai, C., Hanaor, Gan, Y. (2017) Contact stiffness of multiscale surfaces by truncation analysis. International Journal of Mechanical Sciences. 131–132: 305–316. [DOI][PDF:048_IJMS_2017] Abstract: In this paper, we study the contact stiffness of a fractal rough surface compressed by a rigid flat plane. A numerical model based on the analysis of flat punch indentation is proposed for simulated hierarchical surfaces,…

  • Paper online (Heliyon) on crumple-formed materials

    Paper online (Heliyon) on crumple-formed materials

    Hanaor, D., Flores Johnson, E.A., Wang, S., Quach, S., Dela-Torre, K.N., Gan, Y., Shen, L. (2017) Mechanical properties in crumple-formed paper derived materials subjected to compression. Heliyon. 3 (2017) e00329. [DOI][PDF:047_Heliyon_2017] Abstract: The crumpling of precursor materials to form dense three dimensional geometries offers an attractive route towards the utilisation of minor-value waste materials. Crumple-forming results in a mesostructured…

  • Paper online (Fusion Eng. Des.) on ellipsoidal DEM

    Paper online (Fusion Eng. Des.) on ellipsoidal DEM

    Moscardinia, M., Gan, Y., Annabattula, R.K., Kamlah M. (2017) A Discrete Element Method to simulate the mechanical behavior of ellipsoidal particles for a fusion breeding blanket. Fusion Engineering and Design. 121: 22-31. [DOI][PDF:046_FED_2017_M] Abstract: The breeder materials proposed for the solid tritium breeding blanket concepts are ceramic lithium-based compounds in the form of pebble beds. Different fabrication…

  • Paper accepted (Powder Tech.) on packing structures

    Paper accepted (Powder Tech.) on packing structures

    Title: X-ray tomography investigations of mono-sized sphere packing structures in cylindrical containers Author(s): Joerg Reimann, Jerome Vicente, Emmanuel Brun, Claudio Ferrero, Yixiang Gan, Alexander Rack Powder Technology, in press. [DOI] Abstract: The structure of mono-sized sphere packings (diameter d) in cylindrical containers (diameter D and height H) both with and without inner cylinders (diameter Di)…

  • IWMEM2017 website online

    The website of International Workshop on Mechanics of Energy Materials (IWMEM2017) is now online via http://iwmem.org/. The information will be updated in the near future. The workshop will be hosted in Suzhou, 8-11 November, 2017. The venue is the newly established University of Sydney Centre in Suzhou, in Suzhou Industrial Park. The previous workshop was…

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