Thought it was about time to update the blog again - we've made it through the busiest month of the year now for academics and everything else now frees up over the summer holidays whilst the kids are home. (sorry, the undergraduates/postgraduates) Not quite so simple for my two supervisors unfortunately, one of whom is a pro-vice chancellor of the university (and thus works all year around) and the other who is an examinations officer for the Department of Engineering. They signed up for it, I suppose!
We had a mini-conference in Cambridge this week for the CASTech project (Catalytic Advances in Sustainable Technology) which was only bettered by the food at the Cavendish Labs (kidding) and the spectacularly-timed thunderstorm on Tuesday. One of the academics at the Magnetic Resonance Research Centre put up a slide with a (very) large set of complex linear algebra equations and a huge clap of thunder went directly overhead! No such dramatics for my presentation, however. For those interested, it was a 30-minute talk on "Computational fluid dynamic simulations of the hydrodynamics of trickle-bed reactors with validation using magnetic resonance imaging techniques". Short and snappy, as ever.
I'm just getting into the minefield now of techniques for predicting variable-density liquid flows, which will become important once I start considering reaction. The assumption of incompressibility is out of the window once you have strong exo/endothermic reactions going on, unfortunately. I'm about to finally start developing the new code PULSAR and shaping it the way I want it. These big milestones are always very difficult to start, but once I get started on them I find that it takes up all of my attention!
Just as a side note to physicists - why don't you ever develop your equations of state to match fairly ambient conditions? Peng-Robinson was a nightmare to get converging for a 1-atm water solution at 25 degrees C . . .
