17th Symposium of VKI PhD Research 2026

Date: 10-13 March 2026

Location:

10-12 March 2026: VKI, Waterloosesteenweg, 72, 1640 Sint-Genesius-Rode, Belgium - near Brussels

13 March 2026 (only VKI staff and students):
Safran Aero Boosters, Route de Liers 121, 4041 Herstal , Belgium followed by a visit of BeCover, Rue du Fond des Fourches 23A,  4041 Herstal, Belgium

About the symposium

Don't miss the opportunity to learn about the exciting research activities conducted at VKI! Join us online (for the public) / on-site (for VKI members, supervisors and invited guests) from March 10th to March 13th for the VKI PhD Symposium, where prominent lecturers in three application fields of fluid dynamics will give keynote lectures to open each day of the symposium.

VKI PhDs will review the doctoral research carried out in the three departments of the Institute. The symposium is organized into sessions covering a range of topics, including:

• Compressor Aerodynamics & Heat Transfer
• Instrumentation & Measurement Techniques
• Propellant Management
• Turbine Aerodynamics & Heat Transfer
• Shape Optimization
• Liquid Metals & Industrial Flow
• Machine Learning for Fluid Dynamics
• Thermal Management and Process Safety
• Wind Energy & Environmental Flows
• Shape Optimization
• CFD & Numerical Methods
• Hypersonic Propulsion
• Aeronautics & Low Speed Aerodynamics
• Rarefied and Plasma Flows
• Aerothermochemistry
• Aerothermodynamics

Programme

Tuesday, 10 March 2026

08:30 - 09:00 Registration invited guests

09:00 - 09:20    Introduction    
Prof. Jeroen van Beeck and Prof. Delphine Laboureur        

Session: Aeroacoustics and Aerodynamics

Chair: Dr. Alessandro Zarri, Research Engineer
            
09:20 - 09:40 Towards Field Characterization of Drone Emission Noise Using an Attached Microphone Cage
Peter HARTFORD     

09:40 - 10:00 Hybrid Experimental – Numerical Approach for Ice Mechanical Properties Characterization
Francesco MANCINI
    
10:00 - 10:30    Coffee Break
            
10:30 - 10:50 Experimental Investigation of Propeller-Strut Interaction Noise
Balint SOOS

10:50 - 11:10 Machine-Learning based Modeling of the Wall Pressure Statistics in Non-canonical Boundary Layers
Nicholas ZINGALE
    
Session: Thermal Management and Process Safety        

Chair: Dr. Muhsin Can Akkurt, Research Engineer

11:10 - 11:30 Experimental Study of Flow in a Mini Channel by μPIV    
Selçuk KIZILCAOGLU

11:30 - 11:50 Numerical Study of Ship Compartment Fires
Benjamin CREVITS

11:50 - 12:10 Cancelled

12:10 - 13:30    Lunch        

Session: Compressor and Turbine Aerodynamics

Chair: Prof. Fabrizio Fontaneto, Turbomachinery and Propulsion Department
            
13:30 - 13:50 POD Reconstruction of Transitional Turbine Flows
Peter CASSIDY

13:50 - 14:10 Heat Transfer Effects in Compressor Bladings
Jorge PEREZ BARCENA

Session: Wind Energy and Environmental Flows

Chair: Prof. Wim Munters, Envrionmental and Applied Fluid Dynamics Department
        
14:10 - 14:30 Persistent Wind Speed Lows over the North Sea in High-resolution Climate Models
Anouk DIERICKX

14:30 - 14:50 Gravity Waves in Wind Farms: Bridging Models and Data
Alexandros PALATOS-PLEXIDAS

14:50 - 16:30    Poster session + drink            

• Andrea BENI: Reduced-order Modeling of the Acoustic Signature of High-Speed Rotorcraft
• Joran DARTEVELLE: From Mesoscale Weather to Dispersion Modeling in Agroecosystems leveraging Large Eddy Simulation and Reduced Order Model
• Tommaso DE MARIA: Adaptive Control of Sloshing in Partially filled Tanks using Semi-active Baffles and Reinforcement Twinning
• Giacomo Gaetano DE SIO: Experimental and Numerical Study of Environmental Effects on Ionic wind for Atmospheric Electric Propulsion
• Asli Beril EJDER: Multi-Fidelity Modeling of Two-Phase Transport in Wicked Heat Pipes
• Alice FISCHER: Transient Growth Mechanism for Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition on Blunt Forebody
• Ioana GOCEA: Numerical Investigation of Water-liquid Metal Interactions under Film Boiling Conditions 
• Charles JACQUET: Development of Engineering Wake Models for Floating Offshore Wind Turbines from Wind Tunnel Experiments and High-fidelity Numerical Simulations
• Yannick LECOMTE: Reinforcement Twinning for Real Time Control of Variable-pitch Quadcopter Propulsion Systems
• Domenico MASSARI: Advanced Methodologies for Thermal Protection System Design using Dynamic Ground Testing and Flight Correlation
• Carolina MORANDI: DECAF - Development of Evaporation and Condensation Correlations in Air and steam Finned channels
• Gianmario PERRUCCI: Development of a High-Order Computational Fluid Dynamics Solver to Simulate Electron Concentration in Hypersonic Flows
• Justin PESESSE: Influence of Aerothermochemistry on Laminar to Turbulent Transition in Hypersonic Flows
• Vittorio PIRO: Development of Uncertainty Quantification Techniques for Meteoroid Entry: Stochastic Approach to Trajectory and Radiation Modeling
• Francesco PORTA: Design of a Linear Cascade Subsonic Wind Tunnel for Rotating Detonation Engines Applications     
• Florian SOYEZ: Numerical modeling of RFICP Torches for the Electrification of High Temperature Industrial furnaces   
• Théo VAN DYCK: Machine Learning Based Flutter Safe Design of Axial Transonic Compressors in Aeroengines and Heavy Duty Gas Turbines
• Tobias WINTER: Variable-Order Subcell Limiting: A Discontinuous Galerkin Stabilization Technique for Robust and Accurate Flow Simulations

Wednesday , 11 March 2026   

09:00 - 10:00    Keynote: The PhD journey: turning every stumbling block into a stepping stone

Dr. Clara Garcia Sanchez, TU Delft, The Netherlands
        
10:00 - 10:30    Coffee Break
            
Session: Liquid Metal and Industrial Flows

Chair: Dr. Matilde Fiore, Research Engineer
            
10:30 - 10:50 Numerical Investigation into CFD - PBE Models for an IRDE Reactor with Applications to Water Electrolysers
Aswath ASHOK

10:50 - 11:10 Development of Reduced Order Models for the Thermal Hydraulics of Nuclear Reactor
Valerio DI DOMENICO

11:10 - 11:30 A Numerical Analysis of Pore-Scale Two-Phase Flow in Porous Transport Layer of Proton Exchange Membrane Electrolyzer
Silay ÖNDER    

Session: Machine Learning for Fluid Systems    
        
11:30 - 11:50 Identification and Control of Floating Wind Turbines
Sebastiano RANDINO 
    
11:50 - 12:10 Flow Development over an Accelerating Propeller at Low Reynolds Numbers
Manuel RATZ

12:10 - 13:30 Lunch
            
13:30 - 14:45 Keynote: Stress to Resilience and Mental Well-being
Dr. Saar Jacobs, Belgium

Session: Machine Learning for Fluid Systems (continued)
        
14:45 - 15:05 A Meshless Data-tailored Approach to Compute Statistics from Scattered Data with Adaptive Radial Basis Functions
Damien RIGUTTO

15:05 - 15:25 High-Fidelity Fluid–Structure Interaction of Sloshing in Microgravity for Flexible Spacecraft
Umberto ZUCHELLI (online presentation)
    
15:25 - 15:55    Coffee Break
            
Session: Aerothermodynamics

Chair: Professor Guillaume Grossir, Aeronautics and Aerospace Department
            
15:55 - 16:15 Optical Characterization of Hypersonic Crosshatching
Diego HACHEZ   

 
16:15 - 16:35 Numerical Investigation of the Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition over a Blunt Cone using High-Order Discontinuous Galerkin Methods and Stability Theories
Antoine GHYOOT
    
Session: CFD and Numerical Methods
            
16:35 - 16:55 Stabilisation Strategies for High Order DG Simulations of Hypersonic Turbulent Flows
Maxime BORBOUSE

16:55 - 17:15 Two-Dimensional Stability-Based Geometry Optimization of a Planar Quiet Nozzle and Assessment in Three-Dimensional Baseflow
Alberto TESTA
    
17:15 - 17:35 Revision of a Variational Multiscale Framework for Airfoil Simulation and Optimization
Carlo BRUNELLI

Thursday, 12 March 2026

09:00 - 10:00    Keynote: Numerical simulation of hypersonic flows

Dr. Pierre Henri Maire, CEA, France

10:00 - 10:30    Coffee Break
            
Session: Aerothermochemistry

Chair: Dr. Bernd Helber, Research Expert,  Aerothermochemistry Research Expertise Group
            
10:30 - 10:50 Staggered Coupling Strategy of Flow and Material Solvers for Modeling of High-Enthalpy Flows with Ablation
Julien KLAUNER

10:50 - 11:10 Investigating Thermomechanical Behaviour of Woven Thermal Protection Material for Aerospace Applications
Diana MARTINS
    
11:10 - 11:30 Advancing Additive Manufacturing of Technical Ceramics for Aerospace Applications
Waut DECLERCQ

11:30 - 11:50 Characterization of Supersonic Plasma Flow over Flat Plate in the VKI-Plasmatron
Sander HOLUM
    
Session: Rarefied and Plasma Flows

Chair: Dr. Federico Bariselli, Co-leader of Rarefied and Plasma Flows Research Expertise Group
            

11:50 - 12:10 A High-Order Discontinuous Galerkin method for Inductively Coupled Plasma flows  
Landry RIOU (online)

12:10 - 13:30 Lunch            

Session: Rarefied and Plasma Flows (continued)

Chair: Dr. Federico Bariselli, Co-leader of Rarefied and Plasma Flows Research Expertise Group            

13:30 - 13:50 Modelling and Simulation of Plasma-spacecraft Interaction and Charging in Very Low Earth Orbit
Jan SKACEL

13:50 - 14:10 Gyromoment Methods for Highly Magnetized Plasma
Zoubair TAZAKKATI (online)

14:10 - 14:30    Development of a Deterministic Boltzmann-Poisson Solver for the Simulation of a Rarefied Plasma Plume in the VKI DRAG-ON Facility
Bruno FONTAINE (online presentation)

14:30 - 14:50 Development of a high order numerical model for Hall Thrusters
Julien COLUTCHE    (online)

14:50 - 15:20 Coffee Break
            
Session: Propellant management

Chair: Dr. Jorge Pinho, Senior Research Engineer
        
15:20 - 15:40 A Lagrangian Meshless Non-Isothermal Solver: High-Performance Python Implementation via JAX Matrix Operations on GPUs
Samuel AHIZI

15:40 - 16:00 Digital Twinning and Control for the Thermal Management of Cryogenic Tanks
Francisco MONTEIRO

16:00 - 16:20 Experimental Investigation of Bubble Cavitation at the Wall
Alessandro NOVI

Session: Hypersonic Propulsion

Chair: Dr. Bayindir Saracoglu, Research Expert, Hypersonic Propulsion and Combustion Research Expertise Group
        
16:20 - 16:40 Verification and Validation of Runtime Configurable Solver through Deflagration to Detonation Transition and Pulsed Detonation Engine Problems
Sunny RAGHAV

16:40 - 17:00 Multi-Objective Design Optimisation of Variable Cycle Engines
Karel VAN DEN BORRE

Session: Rarefied and Plasma Flows (continued)

Chair: Dr. Federico Bariselli, Co-leader of Rarefied and Plasma Flows Research Expertise Group       

17:00 - 17:20 Effect of Thermochemical Nonequilibrium on Species Diffusion for RF Blackout Prediction (online)
Alexandra RICHET

Friday, 13 March 2026 (at Safran Aero Boosters, Route de Liers 121, 4041 Herstal , Belgium)          

09:00 - 10:00    Keynote (Restricted to VKI Staff) : From current flow simulation trends to test validation in axial low pressure compressor

Stéphane Hiernaux, SAB and Rémy Princivalle, BeCover, Belgium
    
10:00 - 10:15    Coffee break
        
Session: Turbomachinery & Propulsion

Chair: Dr. Filippo Merli, Research Engineer 
        
10:15 - 10:35 Aeroelastic Analysis of Instrumentation in Turbomachinery: Investigation of a Possible Root Cause of Rake Flutter
Bruno BARATA
    
10:35 - 10:55 Experimental Investigation of Supersonic Trailing Edge Flows
Andre DIETZ
    
10:55 - 11:15 Loss Modelling for Innovative High-turning Compressor Profiles by Advanced Data Driven Techniques​
Julien HEINE

11:15 - 11:35 Adjoint Shape Optimization of a Turbo Heater based on Large Eddy Simulations through an Adaptation of the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes Equations
Loir VICTOR

11:35 - 11:55 Aerothermochemical Investigation of Reactive Turbomachinery for Steam Cracking Defossilization Using a Novel Implicit OpenFOAM Solver
Marco CASTALDI

12:00 - 13:00    Lunch           

Session: Turbomachinery & Propulsion (continued)

Chair: Dr. Alessandro D'Aguanno, Research Engineer 
            
13:10 - 13:30 Design, Optimization and Flow Analysis for an Aggressive S-shape Diverter-less Duct
Stefano    PLATINI

13:30 - 13:50 Time-Resolved Self-Aligned Focusing Schlieren Applied to Turbine Cascades
Enrico    ZAMMIT

13:50 - 14:10 Influence of Vortex Shedding Regime on Transonic Turbine Losses
Alexandre HALBY

14:10 - 14:30 Experimental Assessment and Modelling of the Effect of Free-Stream Turbulence on Turbomachinery Boundary Layers: Literature Review, Scaling Approach and Preliminary Experimental Results
Giacomo PASTORINO

14:30 - 14:50 Aerodynamics and Loss Budget of a Transonic LPT Profile
Giovanni DI LUCIA
    
14:50 - 15:00    Closing words       

 15:10 - 17:00    Visits : Shop floor and test center Visits (max. 60 people only VKI members)    
            1. Safran Aero Boosters, Route de Liers 121, 4041 Herstal , Belgium         
            2. BeCOVER, Rue du Fond des Fourches 23A · 4041 - Herstal · Belgium

Fee and Registration

The online participation and registration to the symposium is free. The on-site participation is only on invitation.