von Karman Institute Lecture Series

Turbomachinery Flow Simulation and Modeling

30 June – 04 July 2025

Sint-Genesius-Rode, Belgium (near Brussels)

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About

This new lecture series will focus on the simulation and numerical modeling of multistage turbomachinery flow, covering both state-of-the-art techniques and recent trends in the analysis of design and off-design conditions, as well as their use in multidisciplinary design optimization.
  • Scale-Resolved Simulations: High-fidelity modeling techniques and their application.
  • Turbulence and Transition Modeling: Understanding and managing transitional and turbulent flows in multistage turbomachinery configurations.
  • Mixing Plane Models, Time-resolved & Fourier Methods: Different approaches for different demands  
  • Boundary Conditions for Turbomachinery Flows: Understanding their role on the solution.
  • Convergence Measurement & CFD Validation: Ensuring reliable and robust results.
The lecture team includes globally recognized experts from academia and industry, offering deep expertise in these areas.
  • Expert Knowledge: Gain insights from leading professionals in the field
  • Industry Insights: Learn about the latest advancements in commercial turbomachinery CFD packages and industry applications.
  • Networking: Connect with CFD developers, advanced practitioners, and researchers.
2.0 ECTS transfer for university students participating onsite is possible upon request. The evaluation is carried out via an oral examination
This lecture series is designed for turbomachinery CFD developers and advanced practitioners in both industry and research.

LS Address

Waterloosesteenweg, 72, 1640 Sint-Genesius-Rode, Belgium (near Brussels)

Programme

Monday 30 June 2025: Introduction, SRS (DNS/LES)

08:30 - 09:00 Registration

09:00 - 10:15 Introduction to VKI and Turbomachinery CFD
Prof. Frank Eulitz, VKI, Belgium, Prof. Marcello Manna, University of Naples, Italy

10:15 - 10:30 Coffee break

10:30 - 11:45 Introduction to scale-resolved simulations
Prof. Richard Sandberg, University of Melbourne, Australia

11:45 - 12:45 Industry Impulse presentation 1

12:45 - 14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 15:15 Introduction to Scale-Resolved Simulations 2
Prof. Richard Sandberg, University of Melbourne, Australia

15:15 - 15:45 Coffee break

15:45 - 17:00 Turbulence modelling from RANS to DDES to LES 1
Dr. Philippe Spalart, Flexcompute, USA

17:00 Reception

Tuesday 1 July 2025: From SRS to Turbulence Modelling

09:00 - 10:15 High-order unstructured discretisation for SRS 1
Prof. Koen Hillewaert, University of Liège, CENAERO, VKI, Belgium

10:15 - 10:30 Coffee break

10:30 - 11:45 High-order unstructured discretisation for SRS 1
Prof. Koen Hillewaert, University of Liège, CENAERO, VKI, Belgium

11:45 - 12:45 Industry Impulse presentation
Dr. Philippe Spalart, Flexcompute, USA

12:45 - 14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 15:15 Transition modelling for URANS and DES
Prof. Sławomir Kubacki, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland

15:15 - 15:45 Coffee break

15:45 - 17:00 Turbulence modelling from RANS to DDES to LES 2
Dr. Philippe Spalart, Fluid Sciences Director, Flexcompute, USA

17:00 - 18:00 VKI Facility tour

Wednesday 2 July 2025: Two-scale & Fourier methods, Boundary Conditions Modelling

09:00 - 10:15 Two-scale methods for LES / URANS
Prof. Li He, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

10:15 - 10:30 Coffee break

10:30 - 11:45 Fourier methods for turbomachinery
Prof. Li He, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

11:45 - 12:45 Industry Impulse Presentation 3: Machine learning for turbulence modeling
Prof. Richard Sandberg, University of Melbourne, Australia

12:45 - 14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 15:15 Boundary conditions for steady-state and time resolved analysis
Dr. Christian Frey, DLR, German Aerospace Center, Germany

15:15 - 15:45 Coffee break

15:45 - 17:00 Mixing plane models for multistage applications
Dr. Graham Ashcroft, Dr. Christian Frey, DLR, German Aerospace Center, Germany

Thursday 3 July 2025: Harmonic balance methods, whole-engine SRS applications

09:00 - 10:15 Harmonic balance methods for multistage analysis
Dr. Graham Ashcroft, DLR, German Aerospace Center, Germany

10:15 - 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 - 11:45 SRS simulations of unsteady turbomachinery flows
Dr. Laurent Gicquel, CERFACS, France

11:45 - 12:45 Industry Impulse presentation 4

12:45 - 14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 15:15 Whole-engine scale-resolved simulation
Dr. Laurent Gicquel, CERFACS, France

15:15 - 15:45 Coffee break

15:45 - 17:00 LES-CHT for smooth and micro-structured walls
Prof. Li He, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Friday 4 July 2025: Optimization methods

09:00 - 10:15 Introduction to shape optimization
Prof. Tom Verstraete, VKI, Belgium

10:15 - 10:30 Coffee break

10:30 - 11:45 Multi-disciplinary optimization
Prof. Tom Verstraete, VKI, Belgium

11:45 - 12:45 Industry Impulse presentation 5
to be announced

12:45 - 14:30 Lunch

14:00 Closure roundtable: Outlook of Turbomachinery CFD 2035
Prof. Frank Eulitz, VKI, Belgium, Prof. Marcello Manna, University of Naples, Italy

About the lecturers

Dr. Graham Ashcroft, DLR, Germany

Dr. Graham Ashcroft, DLR, Germany

  • 1994-1998: Studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST),   Manchester, UK, Bachelor of Engineering (First Class Honours)
  • 1998-2001: Ph.D. student at the Aero- and Astronautics Institute of the University of Southampton, Southampton, UK,   Ph.D. Thesis: “A Computational and Experimental Investigation into the Aeroacoustics of Low Speed Flows”, supervisor Prof. Xin Zhang
  • 2001-2009: Research-Scientist at the Institute of Propulsion Technology of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Focus: High-order numerical methods   for simulating unsteady flow phenomena in turbomachinery flows
  • Since 2009: Head of the “Multiphysics” research group within the Numerical Methods department at the Institute of Propulsion Technology
Prof. Frank Eulitz, VKI, Lecture Series Director, Belgium

Prof. Frank Eulitz, VKI, Lecture Series Director, Belgium

Prof. Frank Eulitz is professor and head of the Turbomachinery & Propulsion department at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics. His department is renowned for research and education in the fields of turbine and compressor rig testing, hypersonic propulsion, and multi-disciplinary shape optimization for aerospace, aeronautics, power generation, automotive, and process industry.

Frank is engaged in Turbomachinery CFD and the exploration of emerging hydrogen, additive manufacturing, and quantum computing for future turbomachinery technologies. Frank Eulitz is one of the founding developers of the DLR TRACE code, nowadays a comprehensive simulation and optimization package used by turbomachinery industry and academia for research, product, and technology development. Frank holds a Doctorate from the University of Bochum which he earned while leading the Numerical Methods department of the Institute of Propulsion Technology of the DLR (1999) and an Executive MBA in General Management from the European School of Mgt. & Technology in Berlin (2009) which he earned while heading the NGF Compressor development and Engineering Validation in Siemens Energy’s Gas Turbine business.

Dr. Christian Frey, DLR, Germany

Dr. Christian Frey, DLR, Germany

  • 1995-2001: Studies of Mathematics at Humboldt University of Berlin, 2001:  Diploma in Mathematics
  • 2001-2005: Scientist at University of Cologne
  • 2003-2005: Member of Sonderforschungsbereich (German collaborative research centre) SFB TR12 "Symmetries and Universalities in Mesoscopic Physics"
  • 2005: Doctoral Degree in Mathematics (Dr. rer. nat.), Supervisor: Prof. Dr. M. Lesch.   Doctoral Thesis "On Non-local Boundary Value  Problems for Elliptic Operators"
  • 2005-2015: Scientist at Institute of Propulsion Technology of German Aerospace Center (DLR), Main research areas: Adjoint Flow Solvers, Numerical Boundary   Conditions for Turbomachinery Flows, Frequency Domain Solvers
  • Since 2010: Head of Team "New Methods" within department "Numerical Methods".
Dr. Laurent Gicquel, CERFACS, France

Dr. Laurent Gicquel, CERFACS, France

Dr. Laurent Gicquel holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (specialized in Energetic and Fluid Dynamics) from the University of New-York at Buffalo (2001) and a Habilitation to conduct Research (HdR) from l’Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse (2007).

During his 24 years at CERFACS, he contributed to the development of Large Eddy Simulations (LES), either through the use of the AVBP solver, turbulence modeling, turbulent reacting and non-reacting flows, multi-phase flows, thermo-acoustic instabilities as well as LES for turbomachinery and more largely the use of LES applied to industrial problems.

He is an ERC Panel member (#8: Engineering) since 2021 and has received several distinctions for his work and collaborations with the CERFACS CFD team in the context of high performance computing. In 2019, he has been appointed ‘Fellow of the Combustion Institute’ for his contributions in thermo-acoustic instabilities and is part of the editorial board of the International Journal of Turbomachinery, Propulsion and Power. He is finally a member of multiple international scientific research societies. To date, he has trained over 30 PhD students and has published over a hundred research articles in ranked A international research journals.

Prof. Li He, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Prof. Li He, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Professor Li He (Ph.D. Cambridge, 1990) holds the Statutory Chair of Computational Aerothermal Engineering (https://eng.ox.ac.uk/people/li-he) at University of Oxford. He had been the head of Osney Laboratory (now known as ‘Oxford Thermofluids Institute’), the acting director of the Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre (UTC) in Heat Transfer & Aerodynamics, and the Oxford co-director of UK EPSRC Center of Doctoral Training (CDT) in Gas Turbine Aerodynamics. Prof He’s research interest is primarily in CFD methods development & application for multi-physics multi-component interactive turbomachinery design, optimization and analysis. Having served as an associate editor for ASME Journal of Turbomachinery, a guest editor for International Journal of CFD and Applied Thermal Engineering, he is an associate editor for Aeronautical Journal and the editor-in-chief for Journal of GPPS. Professor He is a fellow of ASME, fellow of Royal Aeronautical Society (FRAeS), and chartered engineer (Ceng).

Prof. Koen Hillewaert, University of Liège and Cenaero, Belgium

Prof. Koen Hillewaert, University of Liège / Cenaero, Belgium

Prof. Koen Hillewaert is an associate professor in the Aerospace & Mechanics department of the Université de Liège teaching turbomachinery, aerospace propulsion and aerothermodynamics. His research group “design of turbomachinery and propulsors” specialises first of all in the development and large-scale deployment of high-resolution discontinuous Galerkin methods for scale-resolving simulations (DNS / LES) of turbulent flows in particular in turbomachinery, and for hypersonic and plasma flows in various applications including reentry and space propulsion devices; The developments are comprehensive in the sense that they include fundamental numerical aspects, up to high-performance aspects including advanced statistical co-processing tools. A second more recent activity concerns the development of dedicated techniques for industrial turbomachinery simulation. On these topics, his group collaborates closely with the research center Cenaero, where he is part-time senior researcher, and the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, where he is an adjoint professor in both the TU and AR department.

Prof. Slawomir Kubacki, Warsaw University, Poland

Prof. Slawomir Kubacki, Warsaw University, Poland

Prof. Slawomir Kubacki graduated from the Czestochowa University of Technology, Poland, in 2000. Later, in 2000, he took a six-month research internship at AEA-Technology (now ANSYS) in Otterfing, Germany, related to developing and testing the prototype version of the transition model. In 2005, he obtained a PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics from the Czestochowa University of Technology. From 2006 to 2009, he did Post-Doctoral research in turbulence and transition modelling at Ghent University. He is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Aeronautics and Applied Mechanics, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland. In 2016 he developed, together with Prof. Erik Dick, an algebraic intermittency model for the prediction of boundary layer transition in turbomachinery flows. His research interests are laminar-to-turbulence transition with the application of RANS-based models and hybrid RANS-LES combined with the transition models.

Prof. Marcello Manna, VKI Lecture Series Director, Italy

Prof. Marcello Manna, VKI Lecture Series Director, Italy

  • 1988: Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy.
  • 1989: One Year Post-Graduate Diploma Course, von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (VKI), Belgium.
  • 1992: Ph.D. in Applied Sciences, Department of Applied Mechanics, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.
  • 1993: Visiting scientist, Department of Applied Mathematics, Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Developments in Sardinia (CRS4), Italy.
  • 1994 – 1997: Faculty member, VKI, Belgium.
  • Since 2005: Professor, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale, Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy.
Dr. Philippe Spalart Flexcompute USA

Prof. Richard Sandberg, University of Melbourne, Australia

Prof. Richard D. Sandberg is Chair Professor of Computational Mechanics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Melbourne. He also leads the program of Power Generation and Transport of the Melbourne Energy Institute.

His main interests are in (i) high-fidelity simulation of transitional and turbulent flows to gain physical understanding of flow and noise generation mechanisms, (ii) pursuing novel machine-learning approaches to help assess and improve low-order models that can be employed in an industrial context. He received his PhD in 2004 in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Arizona and prior to joining the University of Melbourne, he was a Professor of Fluid Dynamics and Aeroacoustics in the Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics research group at the University of Southampton and headed the UK Turbulence Consortium (www.turbulence.ac.uk). He was awarded a veski innovation fellowship in July 2015 entitled: "Impacting Industry by enabling a step-change in simulation fidelity for flow and noise problems" and held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship for 2020-2024 to work on integrating high-fidelity simulation and machine-learning based turbulence modelling. He has coordinated many large-scale high-fidelity turbomachinery simulation projects, with awards from INCITE, ALCC, PRACE and NCMAS. He is an editor for Journal of Turbomachinery, Flow, Turbulence and Combustion, Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics.

Dr. Philippe Spalart Flexcompute USA

Dr. Philippe Spalart, Flexcompute, USA

Dr. Philippe Spalart studied Mathematics and Engineering in Paris, and obtained an Aerospace PhD at Stanford/NASA-Ames in 1982. Still at Ames, he conducted Direct Numerical Simulations of transitional and turbulent boundary layers. Moving to Boeing in 1990, he created the Spalart-Allmaras one-equation Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes turbulence model. He wrote a review and co-holds a patent on airplane trailing vortices. In 1997 he proposed the Detached-Eddy Simulation approach, blending RANS and Large-Eddy Simulation to address separated flows at high Reynolds numbers with a manageable cost. He received the AIAA Fluid Dynamics Award in 2006, became a Boeing Senior Technical Fellow in 2007, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2017, and had the AIAA Reed Award for 2019. His papers have been cited 48,000 times. Recent work includes refinements to the SA model and DES, computational aeroacoustics, theories for aerodynamics and turbulence, and the design of research experiments. Philippe retired from Boeing in 2020.

Prof. Tom Verstraete, VKI, Belgium

Prof. Tom Verstraete, VKI, Belgium

Prof. Tom Verstraete is a professor at the von Karman Insitute in the turbomachinery and propulsion department. He leads the research expertise group on shape optimization where he overlooks the developments of an internal research framework developing optimization tools for turbomachinery components. The focus of the group lies on the development of gradient-based optimization algorithms in a mmutildsiciplinary context, looking simultaneously at fluid dynamics, strucutral mechanics and heat transfer. The framework has been deployed for several industrial projects ranging from automotive, aerospace to chemical engineering. He is an associate editor for the ASME journal of turbomachinery and the International Journal of Turbomachinery, Power and Propulsion.

Fee and Registration

Early Bird registration until 30 April 2025

Deadline for on-site registration: 15 June 2025

Deadline for online registration: 22 June 2025
Price for NATO citizens - Early Bird Registration
Discount of 10% in case of online participation.
Undergraduate students€ 245 € 221
PhD students€ 672 € 605
Staff from recognized universities / research center€ 1064 € 958
Staff from commercial organizations€ 1334 € 1210
Price for NATO citizens - Late Registration
Discount of 10% in case of online participation.
Undergraduate students€ 245
PhD students€ 672
Staff from recognized universities / research center€ 1064
Staff from commercial organizations€ 1344
Price for other citizens - Early Bird Registration
Discount of 10% in case of online participation.
Undergraduate students€ 350 € 315
PhD students€ 960 € 864
Staff from recognized universities / research center€ 1520 € 1368
Staff from commercial organizations€ 1920 € 1728
Price for other citizens - Late Registration
Discount of 10% in case of online participation.
Undergraduate students€ 350
PhD students€ 960
Staff from recognized universities / research center€ 1520
Staff from commercial organizations€ 1920

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