CREA Team

Our Team

Alberto Guardone

My research interests include the theoretical, numerical and experimental investigation of non-ideal compressible-fluid dynamics (NICFD). In particular, I am interested in the observation of so-called non-classical gas dynamics wave-fields in the vapour phase of complex organic compounds and in the near-critical region of pure, common substances. I am the recipient of a ERC Consolidator Grant 2013, aimed at performing unique measurements of NCIFD in the Test-Rig for Organic Vapours (TROVA) facility in Milano, and I am currently collaborating to the FAST experiment at TU Delft. I contributed to the development of the NICFD solvers FlowMesh and zFlow. I helped coding the non-ideal thermodynamics interface in SU2 and in particular the boundary condition for NICFD simulations.

Andrea Spinelli

My research interests cover the theoretical and experimental study of fluid dynamics and thermodynamics of non-ideal compressible flows, including the development of proper measuring techniques. My attention is particularly directed to typical flows of turbomachines operated with working fluids in highly non-ideal conditions, such as organic vapors for organic Rankine cycles (ORCs) and refrigeration systems, and carbon dioxide for supercritical CO2 (sCO2) cycles. I contributed to design and built the lab facilities, primarily the Test Rig for Organic Vapors (TROVA), and I coordinate the experimental activities of the CREA Lab, where the first ever detailed experimental data on non-ideal compressible flows of organic vapors were obtained.

Fabio Cozzi

My research interests, among others: the experimental investigation of reactive and non-reactive flows in burners and combustors by means of PIV/LDV techniques, the experimental analysis of efficiency and flame stability in meso-scale (some millimeters) and laboratory-scale combustors and the development of optical techniques for fluid-dynamics and combustion.
Within the CREA laboratory group I am in charge for the development of the optical techniques for the dense-gas flows and their implementation in the TROVA facility.

Vincenzo Dossena

My research interests include experimental aerodynamics, experimental evaluation of steady and unsteady flow fields in turbomachines, the development of conventional and new-concept probes for aerodynamic measurements, and analysis of the operational and functional behavior of safety relief valves size ranges.

Gabriele Campanardi

My duties include the technical management of the Aerodynamic laboratory of the Department of Aerospace Science & Technology, the technical management of the interdepartmental laboratory of Compressible-fluid dynamics for Renewable Energy Application (CREA), the quality assurance of all Laboratories of the Department and the supervision of workplace safety. Since 2015, I am a certified laser safety officer at Politecnico di Milano.

My expertise is in experimental fluid dynamics: large wind tunnel testing campaigns management, technical support to research and teaching activities, measurement techniques (PIV, LDV, hot wire anemometry, pressure measurements).

Marta Zocca

My doctoral thesis regards the experimental observation and numerical simulation of supersonic Non-Ideal Compressible-Fluid flows. My contributions include the design and verification of aerodynamic devices for the experimental observation of supersonic nozzle flows and of uniform-freestream flows with shock waves in the Test-Rig for Organic VApours (TROVA) at Politecnico di Milano. I am using the SU2 CFD suite to reproduce the TROVA experimental runs and to simulate nozzle flows in the non-ideal regime to support theoretical investigations.

Giorgia Cammi

The aim of my Ph.D. research is to experimentally characterize organic vapor flows inside supersonic nozzles. My main activities consist in managing the experiments conducted on the TROVA facility and in elaborating the experimental data acquired. The experiments performed are of paramount importance since they provide the first data ever acquired suitable to validate the CFD codes that are currently used to project ORC expanders.
My research interest regard also the study of non-ideal flow regimes, in particular the conduction of experiments using mixture and exploit their higher stability limit in order to experimentally observe non-classical gasdynamics phenomena.

Simone Gallarini

My doctoral research includes the experimental analysis of non-ideal fluid supersonic flows and the investigation of the thermal and thermochemical stability of organic compounds. My contribution regards the implementation of a Laser Doppler Velocimetry system in the Test Rig for Organic VApors and the performing of direct velocity measurements by this technique in supersonic nozzle non-ideal fluid flows. About thermal stability, my work deals with the assessment of the thermal stability limit and of thermochemical stability of pure organic fluids and mixtures either in static or cyclic stress conditions.

Camilla Conti

My PhD is funded by an interdisciplinary research grant from the Department of Aerospace Engineering in collaboration with the Department of Energy and Nuclear Science and Technology.

The research topic is “Distributed Mini-ORC Power Systems for Sustainable Energy in Smart Cities”. The aim is to study the peculiar fluid mechanics of mini-ORC systems for solar applications, which differs from standard turbomachinery due to the use of organic fluids in the non-ideal compressible-fluid regime and due to their small size.

My research will cover three main aspects of this fascinating topic: cycle techno-economical optimization, optimal turbine design and experimental investigation of non-ideal flows representative of mini-ORCs using the TROVA (Test-Rig for Organic VApours).

Davide Vimercati

My research activity focuses on theoretical and numerical aspects of Non Ideal Compressible Fluid Dynamics (NICFD). In this context, I deal with both classical and non-classical flow regimes. I contributed to the development of exact solutions to non-classical flows in convergent-divergent nozzles and I evaluated several quasi-1D numerical schemes for these peculiar flows.
Currently, I am focusing on the theory of non-ideal oblique shock waves and on the theory of self-similar waves in steady supersonic planar flows of BZT fluids. I am also using SU2 to assess the flow structures predicted by theory and to investigate more complex configurations such as non-regular shock reflections.

Luuc Keulen

My research activities focuses on the study and development of new theoretical models for estimating thermodynamic properties and physics properties of pure fluids and mixtures. I have conducted experiments on mixtures of Siloxanes and developed new state of the art equations of state at the National Institute for Standards and Technology, Boulder, United States. Another research activity is to determine experimentally the thermal stability limits of Siloxanes. Moreover, I am conducting a theoretical study on the effect of mixtures on Organic Rankine Cycles and the influence of decomposition products and non-condensable gases on the efficiency of the Cycle.

Barbara Re

My research interests mainly focus on the design and use of numerical methods to tackle problems relevant to fluid mechanics applications. Since I joined the CREA Lab during my PhD, I have been the main developer of the software Flowmesh, an unsteady CFD solver which encodes special mesh adaptation features as well as a thermodynamic library for non-ideal compressible regimes, in order to device and support the experimental activities of the team. I also dedicated part of my research activity to model the thermodynamic behavior of pure fluids near the two-phase region and I participated to the preliminary design of a new test rig for the experimental investigation of supercritical carbon dioxide.

Gianluca Parma

My research activity is mainly focused on the development of a Lagrangian Particle Tracking software coupled with the SU2 solver.

This numerical tool will be employed to support the experimental activity in the TROVA facility. In particular it will be useful in the preliminar design and in the a-posteriori analysis of the LDV (Laser Doppler Velocimetry) measurements performed  in the TROVA test-rig.

Giulio Gori

Currently, my research is focused mainly on the investigation of Non-Ideal Compressible-Fluid flows and in particular on the theoretical study of oblique shock-waves in the Non-Ideal regime.
These topics are of utmost interest for the design and the optimization of Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) systems.
Part of my efforts are thus addressed to the development of computational tools capable of dealing with these particular fluid-dynamics problem. Indeed, I am a core developer of the open-source computational fluid dynamic solver SU2 and the coordinator of the SU2 user group at Politecnico di Milano.
In particular I’ve been contributing to the SU2 suite by working on the extention of the CFD solver to Non-Ideal gases, including the addition of the Van Der Waals and the improved Peng-Robinson equations of state.

Moreover, my contribution to the SU2 suite consists also in the implementation numerical methods for sliding grids, for turbo machinery and aerospace applications. Beside working on the addition of the state-of-the-art sliding mesh approaches, I have been developing a novel, fully conservative, approach based on a local grid adaptation strategy.

Along with the development of numerical methods, I contributed to the first time ever validation of a NICFD solver against experimental data.
My research interest regards also the study of the ice accretion phenomenon over aircraft and the further development of the PoliMIce software suite for in-flight icing simulations.