Scope of the Conference

NICFD2020 will bring together researchers and scientists from various application areas who are pioneering theoretical, numerical and experimental advancements in the fluid dynamics of compressible reactive and non-reactive flows of fluids for which the ideal gas law does not apply. More information can be found at the conference website NICFD2020.

The growing interest towards NICFD in the last decade, essentially motivated by its advanced applications in the field of propulsion and power, has determined an impulse in research, and the purpose of this conference is to promote the exchange of information among the quite diverse community, whose interests span from the fundamentals to the industrial applications.

Background

The NICFD conference series has been thought as a biennial forum to promote the exchange of scientific information, to encourage and consolidate the interaction between researchers and professionals in the field of non-ideal compressible-fluid dynamics (NICFD), a sector of fluid mechanics dealing with flows of dense vapours, supercritical fluids and two-phase fluids, whose properties significantly depart from those of ideal gases.

The first edition of the conference was held in Varenna (Italy) in 2016, while the second edition took place in Bochum, Germany in 2018. Information about the 1st and 2nd edition is available on the website of the conferences: NICFD2016 and NICFD2018.

A Special Interest Group (SIG-49) was established in 2019 in the frame of ERCOFTAC, the European Research Community On Flow, Turbulence And Combustion. NICFD conference series address special emphasis to the progress in research, development, and applications of the topics related to the field of propulsion and power with themes ranging from the theoretical foundations to advanced numerical and experimental practices and applied technologies.

Key themes are: experiments; fundamentals; numerical methods; optimization and uncertainty quantification (UQ); critical and supercritical flows; turbulence and mixing; multi-component fluid flows; applications in redorganic Rankine cycle (ORC) power systems; applications in supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power systems; steam turbines; cryogenic flows; condensing flows in nozzles; cavitating flows; super/trans-critical fluids in space propulsion. As the themes include combustion topics, the NICFD conference series is also supported by SIG-51 (the Special Interest Group on High-Pressure & Compressible Combustion).

ERCOFTAC features within NICFD2020

The preliminary schedule of NICFD2020 offers a number of opportunities for the attendees to engage on fruitful discussions on the present and future perspectives of NICFD. More in particular, the event will include:

• 3 keynote lectures from renewed academic and industrial experts followed by ample time for the audience to discuss the presented topics with the speakers. The invited speakers can be found here.
• 3 presentation sessions and 1 poster sessions where all the speakers will disseminate the most recent achievements on fundamentals and applications of NICFD.
• 1 thematic workshops on thermodynamic models where the attendees will have the possibility to share their best practices on the use of advanced thermodynamic models for NICFD computations. The workshop will consist of an introduction on the topic and a session of demonstration of computer codes for the calculation of the thermo-physical properties of fluids relevant to NICFD. The computer codes will be made available to the attendees.
• 1 thematic workshop on measurement techniques for NICFD applications where the attendees will have the possibility to share their hands-on experience on setting-up experiments in the non-ideal compressible flow European Research Community On Flow, Turbulence And Combustion Form updated April 2017 regime. In addition, the workshop will be instrumental to agree on the necessary steps for establishing an open database and defining best practices for the validation of open-source NICFD computational tools.
• A closing session where all attendees will discuss about plans for collaborative research projects.