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 Ice Characterization by IET method
Francescon 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        

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 On the Detectability of the Turbulent/Non-Turbulent Interface in Free-Shear Flow Using Combined PIV and Mie Scattering
Carlo SANAPO     

12:10 - 13:30    Lunch        

Session: Compressor and Turbine Aerodynamics
            
13:30 - 13:50 Redesigned C1 Linear Cascade: Characterization and Preliminary Experimental Outcomes
Giacomo PASTORINO

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: TBD
• Joran DARTEVELLE: From Mesoscale Weather to Dispersion Modelling in Agroecosystems leveraging Large Eddy Simulation and Data Driven Modal Analysis
• 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: 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      
• Florian SOYEZ    
• 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: 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 Investigation into CFD - PBM models for an IRDE reactor
Aswath ASHOK

10:50 - 11:10 Development of Reduced Order Models for Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics
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 Closed-Loop Simulations of Sloshing for New-Generation Space Missions
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 Characterision 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 Optimization of 2D planar Nozzle for Quiet Facility
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: 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 Plasma Testing and Modelling of Cork-Phenolic Thermal Protection Materials
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    Deterministic evaluation of the Boltzmann collision operator: towards rarefied plasma simulations   
Bruno FONTAINE (online presentation)

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

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 Characterization 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 a Three-stream VCE
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) : 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 Design of Flutter-robust Instrumentation for Aero Engines
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​
Heine JULIEN

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 Development of a Novel Rotor-Stator Reactor for Decarbonizing the Steam Cracking Process through High-fidelity Optimization
Castaldi MARCO

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 Self-Aligning Focusing Schlieren Applied to Linear Cascade
Enrico    ZAMMIT

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

14:10 - 14:30 Transitional Boundary Layers at Off-Design Incidence in Low-Pressure Turbines
Peter CASSIDY

14:30 - 14:50 Cavity and Leakage Flows in a Turbine Stage with Shocks
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.