NEMOH Short Course
Thermo-fluid Dynamics in Computational Volcanology
NEMOH Short CourseThermo-fluid Dynamics in Computational VolcanologyMarch 03 - March 06, 2015, Pisa (Italy)
A report by Eduardo Rossi
The NEMOH Short Course on “Thermo-fluid Dynamics in Computational Volcanology” was held from 3-6 March 2015 at the INGV section of Pisa (Italy). Aim of the school was to introduce some basic concepts of thermo-dynamics and fluid-dynamics and their practicle application in volcanology. Friday 6th was completely focused to the funding opportunities for young scientists within the EU programme Horizon 2020.
Tuesday was dedicated to thermo-dynamics: Paolo Papale (INGV Pisa) and Chiara Montagna (INGV Pisa) introduced the theory of multiphase equilibrium and its consequences to real problems in volcanology. The last part of the lesson was dedicated to exercises with SOLWCAD, a C++/Fortran77 routine for computing the thermodynamic equilibrium between multiphase fluids.
Wednesday was the day for fluid-dynamics and Partial Differential Equations (PDE). During the morning Mattia de' Michieli Vitturi (INGV Pisa) introduced the basic topic of conservation equations in fluid-dynamics and how they lead to partial differential equations. In particular Mattia focused on the first order PDE and the importance of boundary conditions in such a kind of equations. In the afternoon Matteo Cerminara (SNS – INGV Pisa) gave an overview of second order differential equations and their classifications, with a special attention to the Navier-Stokes equations which represent the theoretical base for complex fluids. The lesson ended with Tomaso Esposti Ongaro (INGV Pisa), who explained us how to model multiphase fluids, which are so important in Volcanology where there is usually a non negligible interaction between the solid phase (clasts, tephra, etc.) and gas phase.
Both the first two days ended officially with a “happy poster section”, where all the participants presented and discussed their works among all the other students and experts.
Thursday was completely dedicated to learn and practice with OpenFOAM, a powerful (and free...) tool which permits to solve complex problems in fluid-dynamics. During the morning Simone Colucci (INGV Pisa) and Mattia De' Michieli Vitturi (INGV Pisa) introduced the main features and applications of OpenFOAM (mesh generation, initial and boundary conditions, etc. ). In the afternoon students were divided in groups for a “pro-active” exercise with OpenFOAM: each group had to solve a different (non simple) problem and to give a short discussion to the class about results obtained. All the groups got interesting outcomes, underlying how this powerful software can be learnt easily and applied to complex problems in volcanology.
The last day of the school was a special one. In fact the topic of the morning was “funding opportunities for young scientists”. Raffaela Pignolo (INGV Pisa) explained us what are the possibilities offered by the European Union within the frame of Horizon 2020, the European funding plan for scientists in the next seven years (2014-2020). It was a really precious lesson both for the clarity of the lecturer and for the importance of the topic. In fact nowadays a relevant part of scientists' work consists in writing projects to get funds for their research. Therefore we appreciated the interaction between students and experts on this very delicate theme.
It was a very useful school for my research-topic. Modeling volcanic ash aggregation requires often a basic knowledge of fluid-dynamics and a clear approach to ordinary and partial differential equations. And this school has been the occasion to clarify some concepts and doubts that are always present in a “early researcher’s life”. No less important was also the day dedicated to OpenFOAM, since it represents the GNU standard to solve fluid-dynamics complex problems in the scientific community. In my opinion the next generation of volcanologist will have to know at least the basic features of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD): OpenFOAM seems to be the good environment to learn how to do it. The thing that impressed me more is that in less then a day we were capable to understand and solve numerically quite complicated problems!
Finally, the lecture on multiphase flows showed me the next frontiers of multiphase fluid-dynamics, which represent probably the future approach to the study of volcanic ash aggregation.
In summary: a kind of training to recommend to all the students (not only from volcanology) and to all the organizers
