This UL Talk centres on fluid mechanics and is about fluid flows, including turbulence and flows containing solid particles, drops or bubbles. Professor Harry Van den Akker explains fluid flow, giving examples we are all aware of in our daily life such as weather, air planes, rivers and blood flow. His research mostly focuses on flows in an industrial context.
Professor Harry Van den Akker is Bernal Chair of Fluid Mechanics and leads an international research group in the field of Fluid Mechanics at the University of Limerick. His world-wide reputation in the field is obvious: he was Visiting Burgers Professor of Fluid Mechanics in 2018 at the University of Maryland and ‘William R. Kenan Jr.’ Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University in 2021.
In 2011, the North American Mixing Forum (NAMF), affiliated with the AIChE, selected Harry’s 1999-paper as one of the 21 most influential contributions to the field of mixing (since 1940). This paper is at the basis of the CFD software M-Star which makes a big hit these days both in academia and industry. Then, in 2015, the Working Party on Mixing of the European Federation of Chemical Engineers bestowed him with the BHR Group Lifetime Recognition Award. In 2011, Harry won the prestigious Master Teacher Award for Excellence in Research & Teaching at Delft University of Technology.
The invitation to teach at Princeton was triggered by his textbook “Transport Phenomena - The Art of Balancing”, published in 2015. It is being used at Princeton as well as at Columbia University and Stony Brook University, both in New York. In March this year, he contributed to the Physics of Fluids special issue commemorating Professor Robert Byron Bird, whom he describes as the “Godfather of Transport Phenomena”. Harry’s textbook is considered as an alternative to Bird’s classical masterpiece.
Harry’s expertise lies in computational and experimental fluid mechanics and multiphase mixing, with a focus on using and developing pseudo-potential lattice Boltzmann techniques for more detailed and faster simulations. He strongly believes that this type of computational simulations is very suitable for probing the details of particularly multi-phase flow dynamics which are not (easily) accessible to experimental techniques.
In spite of decades of multi-phase flow research, many intriguing questions are still waiting for answers, particularly with respect to the detailed dynamics of multi-phase flows. In addition, the current shift towards multi-phase flows at smaller scales implies extra challenges in terms of spatial and temporal resolution for both experimental and computational studies.
He is a Principal Investigator & Modelling Theme Leader with SSPC SFI (Science Foundation Ireland) Research Centre for Pharmaceuticals. He has successfully led projects with Enterprise Ireland funded research centres: the Dairy Processing Technology Centre (DPTC) and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Technology Centre (PMTC),
His published work is in the top 20 of most cited papers in the American Institute of Chemical Engineering Journal and Chemical Engineering Research and Design, and in the top 40 in Physics of Fluids and in Chemical Engineering Science. His publications are accessible on the Bernal Institute website header.