Herman Deconinck
Biography
Education
- Ph.D. Applied Sciences, Vrije Univ. Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium, 1983
- University degree in Mechanical Engineering, Vrije Univ. Brussel (VUB), Belgium, 1977
Career
2010-2019: Dean of faculty VKI, responsible for educational programs of the VKI
2010-present: Full Professor at BRUFACE, Brussels Faculty of Engineering (joint master program between the VUB and ULB universities of Brussels).
2007-2010: Head, Aeronautics/Aerospace Dept, von Karman Institute
1999-2003: Head, Aeronautics/Aerospace Dept, von Karman Institute
1996-present: Full Professor, Aeronautics/Aerospace Dept, von Karman Institute
1990-1996: Associate Professor, von Karman Institute
1990-present: Full Professor, Univ. Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
1986-1990: Assistant Professor, von Karman Institute
1983-1986: Research Scientist, Dept Fl. Dyn., Univ. Brussels (VUB)
Awards and Memberships
- 2010-present : Belgian delegate at IFAR, International forum for Aviation Research
- 2010-present : Belgian delegate in the Scientific Council of ERCOFTAC
- 2008-2010: Chairman Computational Fluid Dynamics committee of ECCOMAS (European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences)
- 2001-present: Member Scientific Council of CENAERO
- 1990-1998: Member AGARD Fluid Dynamics Panel
- 1998-2004: Member, NATO-RTO Applied Vehicle Technology panel (level 3)
- Member of Editorial Board of “International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering”, since 2001
- Member of the Scientific Committee of the International Conference on Computational Fluid Dynamics, (resulting from the merger of the ICNMFD et ISCFD conferences), since 1999, now ICCFD
- Member of steering committee 1st, 2nd and 3d International Workshop on High-Order CFD Methods (2012, 2013, planned 2014)
- Member of Editorial Advisory Board of “Computers and Fluids”, 1996-2009
- Member of Editorial Advisory Board of “Computational Fluid Dynamics Journal”
- 1997-2004: Member Steering Committee of European Science Foundation (ESF) project AMIF: Applied Mathematics for Industrial Flows
- 2010-present: Member Computational Fluid Dynamics committee of ECCOMAS
- 1998-present: Member Steering committee of GRASMECH: Graduate School for Mechanics of the Belgian Universities
- 1996-2012: Member of the steering group WOG of FWO-Flanders on Advanced Numerical Methods for Mathematical Modeling”
- 2000-present: Member of Dutch-Flemish Working group on numerical analysis: Werkgemeenschapscommissie Numerieke Wiskunde
Service to Society
Evaluations
- European Commission Growth 4th, 5th 6th, 7th framework program: Aeronautics
- External evaluator for “Bonus Incentive Scheme for Research Schools” of the Dutch NWO (1997)
- Expert Committees for Industrial project grants offered by the Brussels regional government (IRSIB), (2000-2013)
- Expert evaluator for Industrial project grants offered by the Flemish regional government (IWT)
- Expert Evaluator for EU commission, Directorate H – Transport – FP6 and FP7
- Reviewer of papers for: Journal of Computational Physics, SIAM Journal of Numerical Analysis, Computers and Fluids, AIAA Journal
Member of Promotion Committees/Request of Recommendations for Promotions
Advice for tenure position at The University of Texas at Austin (USA), Technical University of Delft (Nl), University of Toronto (Ca).
Organizer and chairman of sessions on:
- Member Technical and programme committee of Fourth Symposium on Aerothermodynamics fro Space Vehicles, Caserta, Italy, 16-18 October 2001
- Organiser INGENET Case studies Open Day, June 8, 2001, VKI
- Member Scientific Committee of West East High Speed Flow Field Conference, april 22-26, 2002, IUSTI Université de Provence, Marseiles
- Session organiser and/or session chairman conferences at: ECCOMAS conferences AIAA CFD and Fluid Dynamics conferences, other CFD conferences (ICCFD, Canadian CFD, ACOMEN)
Conference and Event Organizer (conferences, lecture series, workshops)
- Organizer and chairman of ICCFD4 Conference, Gent, July 2006
- Co-chairman ECCOMAS 5th European Conference in CFD, Lisbon, Portugal, 2010
- Co-chairman SIMBIO11 conference, Simulation and Modeling of Biological Flows, Brussels, 2011
- Director of VKI advanced CFD Lecture Series, almost annually since 1987.
Teaching
Formal Courses
- Numerical Methods for Fluid Dynamics 1 (NMFD1, VKI): (1.25 ECTS)
- Numerical Methods for Fluid Dynamics 2 (NMFD2, VKI): (3 ECTS)
- Computational fluid dynamics for compressible flows (CMCF, VKI): (4 ECTS)
- Computational fluid dynamics for incompressible flows (CMIF, VKI) (4 ECTS)
- Since 2007-2008: Inviscid Aerodynamics – Compressible flow: (CMCF, VKI) (4 ECTS)
- Fluid dynamics of compressible flows (Brussels University ULB), 30 hrs
- Aerodynamics (BRUFACE, Brussels universities ULB and VUB), 30 hrs
Lecturer at Special Courses
- Computational Methods for hyperbolic conservation laws, (30 hrs guest course) Capita Selecta KULeuven, 1995
- Biannually since 1999: Course at doctoral level in the framework of GRASMECH, the Graduate School in Mechanics of the Belgian Universities: Advanced Finite Volume and Finite Element techniques for convection-diffusion problems (8 hrs).
- Multidimensional upwind methods for unstructured grids. AGARD short course ``Unstructured grid methods for advection dominated flows'', AGARD R-787, in September 1992 at the NASA Ames Res. Center, California.
- Residual distribution methods for compressible flow. Cours INRIA-CEA, Versailles 25-28 April, 2000
Invited Lecturer at
- Invited speaker NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI), September 17-28, 1984, Cesme, Izmir, Turkey
- Invited speaker for ``Workshop on FV methods for the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations", Oxford, 20-21 March, 1991
- Invited speaker for the ``4th International Symposium on Computational Fluid dynamics", Davis, CA, USA, 9-12 September, 1991
- Invited speaker for the ICASE/NASA Langley RC Workshop on ``Algorithmic trends for Computational Fluid Dynamics in the 90's", Hampton, Virginia, USA, 15-17 September 1991
- Invited speaker for Internal Colloquium, INRIA Roquencourt, 5-6 January, 1992
- Invited speaker, Conference on supercomputing in Science and Industry, June 1-5, 1992, Monte Verita, Ticino, Switzerland
- Invited speaker for the Workshop on ``Unstructured grid methods for Fluid Mechanics Problems", University of Minnesota Supercomputer Institute, Minneapolis, USA, 13 July, 1993.
- Invited speaker for Internes Kolloquium, DLR Braunschweig, 26 October 1993
- Keynote speaker for the 4th ICFD Conference, Oxford, 3-6 April, 1995
- Keynote speaker for the ``Conference on Numerical Methods for the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations", Montréal, 14-16 September, 1995
- Invited speaker for Internes Colloquium, Darmstadt, November 23, 1995
- Keynote speaker on Algorithms for the ``15th International Conference on Numerical Methods in Fluid Dynamics", Monterey, June 24-28, 1996
- Invited speaker for symposium held in the honor of prof. Godunov: Godunov’s method for gas dynamics, May 1-2, 1997, U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor
- Invited lecturer for workshop on hyperbolic conservation laws, KTH, Stockholm, 13-17 December, 1997
- Organizer AMIF-ESF workshop “computing methods for compressible flow with low Mach number effects, Courchevel, 7-9 January, 1998
- Organizer, chairman and speaker minisymposium “unstructured grid methods for aerodynamic simulation”, ECCOMAS 98, Athens, September 7-11, 1998
- Co-organisor conference on Applied Mathematics for Industrial flow problems (AMIF), 1-3 0ctober 1998, San Feliu de Guixols, Spain
- Invited speaker for NFD 2000, “Towards a new Fluid Dynamics with its challenges in Aerospace engineering”, symposium held in the honor of Dr. J. Perrier, Paris, 20-23 November, 2000
- Co-organiser (with Prof. R. Abgrall) and keynote speaker Workshop on accurate methods for hyperbolic systems : Residual based schemes, Discontinuous Galerkin methods and adaptation, Bordeaux, June 17-19, 2002
- Invited speaker Study Day Belgian Royal Academy, National Comity for Logics, History and Phylosophy of Sciences, “Research in Space Technologies”, december 12, 2003
- Invited keynote speaker 11th ICCAM meeting, International Congress on Computational and Applied Mathematics, Leuven, July 26-30, 2004,
- Invited keynote speaker Woudschoten Conference of the Dutch-Flemish Numerical Analysis Communities, October 12-14, Woudschoten, The Netherlands, 2005
- Invited keynote speaker, 3d International Conference on Advanced Computational Methods in Engineering (ACOMEN), Gent, May 30 – June 2, 2005
- Invited Keynote speaker 15th Annual Conference of the CFD Society of Canada?Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 27-31, 2007, Toronto, May 2007
- Invited Keynote speaker 18th Polish National Conference of Fluid Mechanics KKMP08, Gdansk, Poland, September 21-25, 2008
Research
Main Research Interest
- Computational Fluid Dynamics: Development of algorithms for CFD solvers and grid generation. Finite element and Residual Distribution Methods.
- Finite Volume methods, multigrid, hybrid grid generation.
- Applications in aeronautics, hypersonic reentry flows, plasma flow, aero-acoustics, turbomachinery, two-phase flow, MHD, electrochemical reactors, nuclear engineering, space weather simulation
Research Activities
Software:
Development of the collaborative multiphysics software platform COOLFluiD since 2002, see https://github.com/andrealani/COOLFluiD/wiki. Apart from 12 PhD candidates at VKI, about 10 external partners collaborated in this software platform initiated and managed by VKI, working on different methods and applications: aerothermodynamics, aerodynamics, higher order schemes, space weather, ion transport in electrochemical reactors, conjugate heat transfer, aeroelasticity.
Principal investigator of funded research by ESA (European Space Agency) and Belgian governments:
- Hermes European Space Shuttle Program (2 projects): 1986-1989, Computation of hypersonic flows using unstructured meshes, Accuracy of flow solvers using structured or unstructured meshes (principal contractor Dassault),
- ESA-GSTP: 1989-1990, Parallel computing for aerothermal applications
- ESA-TRP: 2000-2005, ESA Advanced Reentry Demonstrator Post Flight Analysis (ARD, principal contractor Aerospatiale)
- ESA PRODEX6: 2001-2004, The Solar Drivers of Space Weather I,
- ESA PRODEX8: 2005-2007, The Solar Drivers of Space Weather II
- Many ESA GSTP and TRP projects at VKI on aerothermodynamics: 2000-2011, responsible for the simulation part of the project
- SBO MUTECH: 2005-2009, Novel multiscale approach to transort phenomena in electrochemical processes
- SBO CAPRICORN: 2006-2010, Simulation and design tools towards the reduction of aerodynamic noise in confined flows.
- FWO PROJECT with KULeuven: 1998-2002, Multidimensional upwinding and parallel implicit solvers for Magnetohydrodynamic flow problems, project G.0344.98
- FWO PROJECT with VUB: 2005-2008, Design and implementation of intelligent solution strategies for the numerical simulation of electrochemical reactors.
- FWO PROJECT with KULeuven: 2011-2014, Solar coronal mass ejections: innovative multi-component plasma models
- GOA KULeuven: 2004-2008, Multi-disciplinary Research on the Solar Astrophysics
Participation in European research projects:
- ASTAR (Nuclear Engineering Program): 2001-2003, Advanced 3D Two-phase flow simulation tool for reactor safety
- NUMODION (Material Sciences Program): 1995-1999, Development and evaluation of methods for the prediction of current density and layer thickness distribution in electrochemical systems
- DESINER (Material Sciences Program): 1999-2002, Development and evaluation of industrial electrochemical reactors
- IDEMAS (Aeronautics Program, coordinator): 1997-2000 Industrial Demonstration of accurate and efficient Multidimensional upwind and multigrid Algorithms for aerodynamic Simulation on unstructured grids
- AMIF (European Science Foundation ESF program): 1998-2001, Applied Mathematics for Industrial Flow Problems (AMIF)
- EUA4X (EU Marie Curie Conferences and Training Courses project): 2005-2008, A European Atelier for Engineering and Computational Sciences
- SPECTRUM (Material Sciences Program): 2001-2005, Superprecision electrochem-ical machining
- AMeGOS (Informatics Program ESPRIT): 1998-2003: Automatic Mesh Generation and Optimisation for Industrial Flow Simulations
- ADIGMA (Aeronautics Program): 2006-2009 (FP6), Adaptive Higher-Order Variational Methods for Aerodynamic Applications in Industry
- VALIANT (Aeronautics Program, PI J. Anthoine): 2009-2012, VALidation and Improvement of Airframe Noise prediction Tools started june 2009
- IDIHOM (Aeronautics Program): 2010-2012, Industrialisation of High-Order Methods – A Top-Down Approach
- GRAIN (Aeronautics program): 2010-2012, GReener Aeronautics International Networking
- GRAIN2 (Aeronautics program): 2013-2015, GReener Aeronautics International Networking
- EM-EASED: Erasmus Mundus project action2 strand 2 (2013-2017)