Success for the Faculty: New CRC

On 24th November 2017 the German Research Foundation (DFG) approved setting up a new special research field (SFB) at the University of Stuttgart. The new SFB 1313 entitled “Interfacial driven multi-field process in porous media“ dedicates itself to the flow, transport and deformation processes of liquids and gases in porous materials.Speaker will be Prof. Rainer Helmig from the Institute for Modelling Hydraulic and Environmental Systems (IWS) of the faculty.

The Rector of the University of Stuttgart, Professor Wolfram Ressel, commented on the decision by the DFG by expressing his pleasure, “With the physical-numeric treatment of porous media the SFB 1313 is supplementing in an outstanding way the focal point “Simulation and Modelling“ as well as the overarching profile sector “Intelligent systems for a sustainable society“ at the University of Stuttgart and in this framework will realise highly topical fundamental collaborative research.

How liquids or gases (fluids) spread in porous media, for example in rocks, and to which deformations this leads plays a role in very many fields of application. Examples of this are the optimisation of fuel cells, the storage of carbon dioxide or methane underground, the prediction of landslides after heavy rain or the transport of medicaments in human tissues.

The special research field (SFB) 1313 has set itself the target of developing a fundamental understanding of how the interfaces – for example between two fluids or between the fluid and a solid material – influence flow, transport and deformation in porous media. On the one hand it should be quantified which influencing factors like pore geometry, the heterogeneity and cracks in the porous medium have on the dynamics of the flow processes. On the other hand mathematical and numerical models should be developed with which the impacts of processes that take place on very many small scales can be integrated into flow simulations.

At the centre of the research there are three representative fields. Project field A treats complex exchange processes of mass, impulse and energy at the border of porous medium and air flows as they occur, for example, when water evaporates in air. Project field B makes complex crack and failure processes in porous media the subject of discussion. Project field C deals with changes in the pore space on the basis of processes at the interface between fluid and solid material phase. This is the case, for example, when salt precipitates in the ground and the pore spaces are minimised through this, thus leading to suppression processes.

The research combines mathematical and numeral modelling with multi-scale, image-based experiments. In another, superordinate project field the focus will be on visualising the simulation and experimental results, to validate the models and to link multi-physics and multi-scale simulation environments. In addition, a new graduate school is to be set up in the framework of the SFB.