Computational Fluid Dynamics:sample projects from 2014

Sauro SucciIAC-CNR Rome and IACS-Harvard

July 31, 2015

1 Transdermal drug delivery in stratum corneum

The increased interest in transdermal drug delivery has highlighted the im-portance of understanding fluid-particles dynamics in porous media. In thiswork, the fluid-mediated transport of drug particles in the Corneocytes ofStratum Corneum is investigated by means of the Lattice Boltzmann method,as coupled to a particle dynamics solver to track the trajectory of the drugparticles. The numerical method is meant to offer a computational frame-work for the analysis and optimization of transdermal drug delivery.

Figure 1: Drug particle trajectories in the porous media representing stratumcorneum

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2 Smoothed-particle hydrodynamic simulation

of galaxy mergers

Galaxy mergers and galaxy formation in general, is a tremendously complexprocess, involving the nonlinear interplay between gas, stars, black holesand dark matter. In this project, we use an adaptive smoothed-particlehydrodynamic (SPH) method to gain insights into the complexities of theabove process.

Figure 2: Smoothed particle representation of galaxies at various levels ofadaptivity.

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3 Particle simulation of wind flows around

buildings

The wind environment is a critical component of urban micro-climate, andit affects many aspects of urban life, such as energy consumption, pedestriancomfort, traffic conditions and many others. Predicting wind patterns underthe complex geometries presented by urban envinronments still presents amajor challenge to CDF techniques, especially for architectural purposes,which demand a large number of design test solutions, to be inspected andmodified on a daily basis. In this project we explore the possibility of usingparticle methods to speed up the CFD-assisted design of urban environments.

Figure 3: Particle flowing around a schematic building

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