Research Initiation Award: A Boltzmann Model for Multi-Scale and Multi-Physics/Chemistry Transport Phenomena in Porous Media

研究启动奖为历史上黑人学院和大学（HBCU）的初级和中级职业教师提供支持，他们正在建立新的研究项目或重新定向和重建现有项目。预计该奖项将有助于进一步提高教师的研究能力和效率，改善家庭机构的研究和教学，并使本科生参与研究经验。授予田纳西州立大学（大津）的奖项有助于为许多科学和工程领域普遍存在的一些最具挑战性的流体输送问题开发革命性的模拟模型，因此，对技术，环境，健康和经济具有巨大的潜在影响。该项目还致力于本科生参与科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）领域的研究，并提供独特的指导计划。此外，本项目还通过将数学、编码和工程学相结合，促进大津和其他HBCU的本科生的科学计算教育，以提高他们从事STEM职业所必需的数学和编码素养。本项目专注于具有挑战性的研究问题，这是一种特殊类型的流体传输现象，具有三个独特的特征：多尺度、多孔介质和多物理/多化学。一个代表性的问题是在氧化还原液流电池的多孔电极，这是利用作为一个案例研究基准开发的模拟模型，以及证明其潜力的电解质的运输。该项目的目标是开发一种具有高性能计算能力的专用模拟模型，该模型基于一种新的方法，即用有限体积法求解Boltzmann方程，从而可以方便地采用完全非结构化网格来精确重建多孔介质呈现的复杂三维边界。该项目的新奇之处在于，它提供了一个专门定制的模拟模型，该模型在多孔介质中的多尺度和多物理/多化学流体输运现象的现有方法中表现出计算性能（定义为通过相关计算成本归一化的准确性）的优越性。这种新的模型可以加速对所选研究问题的理解。随着进一步的发展，它可以成为一个通用的模拟工具，用于模拟流体传输以外的任何传输现象。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at the home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The award to Tennessee State University (TSU) facilitates the development of a revolutionary simulation model for some of the most challenging fluid transport problems that are ubiquitous in many scientific and engineering fields, and, therefore, has tremendous potential impacts on technology, the environment, health, and economy. This project is also dedicated to the involvement of undergraduate students in the research in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields with a unique mentoring plan. In addition, this project promotes the education on scientific computing for undergraduate students at TSU and other HBCUs by merging math, coding, and engineering, in order to improve their math and coding literacy which is essential for them to pursue a STEM career.This project focuses on a challenging research problem, which is a special type of fluid transport phenomena, characterized by three unique features: multi-scale, porous media, and multi-physics/multi-chemistry. A representative problem is the transport of electrolytes in the porous electrodes of redox flow batteries, which is utilized as a case study to benchmark the developed simulation model as well as to demonstrate its potential. The goal of this project is to develop a specialized simulation model with the high-performance computing capability based on a new methodology that solves the Boltzmann equation with the finite volume method, which allows a convenient adoption of fully unstructured grids to precisely reconstruct the complex three-dimensional boundaries rendered by porous media. The novelty of this project is that it provides a specifically tailored simulation model that demonstrates a superiority in computational performance (defined as accuracy normalized by associated computational cost) over existing methodologies for the multi-scale and multi-physics/multi-chemistry fluid transport phenomena in porous media. This new model can accelerate the understanding of the selected research problem. With further development, it can become a general simulation tool for the modeling of any transport phenomenon beyond fluid transport.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.