Filippo Gerbino

Dr Gerbino achieved a bachelor degree in Aerospace engineering with full marks and honours at the University of Palermo. Afterwards he attained a master degree in the University of Pisa in Space engineering.

His studies focused on thermodynamics, aerodynamics, flight mechanics, space flight mechanics, aerospace structures, aeronautical engines, rocket propulsion, electric propulsion and satellite instrumentation.

He carried on laboratory activities for nine months at DESTEC department for his master thesis project, publishing an article on his research in early 2018.

From January 2018 he was selected for a PhD project at the University of Brighton.

Email address: F.Gerbino@brighton.ac.uk

Qualification: PhD

Timeframe: 2 Jan 2018 – to date

Filippo-Gerbino

Thesis title

Development of virtual design tools to support manufacturing of reduced greenhouse gas emission systems operating with alternative fuels

My research

Conventional energy carriers such as diesel and natural gas have been extensively studied in the literature and various models have been developed and tailored to the physical and thermochemical properties of these fuels. On the other hand, very little is still known about the thermochemical behaviour of alternative fuels under realistic operation conditions since performing lab experiments is expensive and not always accurate. This lack of knowledge raises considerable safety issues and design limitations obliging the manufacturers to restrict the use of alternative energy carriers to low percentage blends.

Tools that can help diversify the energy mixture with alternative energy carriers and contribute to the design of less polluting thermal-propulsion systems are a key industrial priority.

This project aims to develop a novel Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) tool, which will be able to accurately simulate flow dynamics under extreme thermodynamic conditions of real-life applications when a diverse energy carrier input is used. The novelty of the project lies in the derivation of hybrid equations of state that can be dynamically activated depending on the local thermodynamic properties as well as chemical characteristics of the fuel input.

The tool is aimed at allowing, for the first time, the unified modelling of all the phases of energy production in a combustion device from fuel injection to emissions.

The project objectives are to:

  • develop a novel hybrid scheme to calculate thermodynamic properties of synthetic and bio-derived fuels under extreme thermodynamic conditions;
  • integrate the scheme to the CFD tool currently under development at the AEC that model fuel injection ignition and combustion in a unified manner;
  • validate the tool against experimental data for conditions relevant to both IC engines and gas turbines.

Supervisors

Dr Konstantina Vogiatzaki

Dr Robert Morgan

Dr Penelope Atkins