Research Projects Supported by HKU's High Performance Computing Facilities

Project Title:

Multiplicity and Stability in Transport Phenomena

Transport phenomena refer to mass, momentum, energy and entropy transfer, which find applications in various fields. Nonlinear transport phenomena are important and complicated; there are many solutions; nonuniqueness is the rule; sets of solutions must be described, and stable and observable subsets must be separated from the others. We study these hard problems numerically by our well-developed general program package of numerical simulation for continuation, bifurcation, stability and entropy analysis in transport phenomena. We have made comprehensive simulations of the exothermic chemical reaction in catalyst beds, flows in porous media and mixed convection in cooling systems of rotating machinery. We are now working on the numerical study of tumor multiplicity and stability, aiming to find the causative factors and clinical applicability of spontaneous regression of malignant tumors.

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The rich features of multiplicity and stability from this project are of considerable significance for novel, better and more efficient design/control of equipments and systems involving transport phenomena. The establishment of a critical technology base for Hong Kong in high technology and biotechnology requires the development of local talent and expertise in this area. The project represents a concrete contribution towards such development. The core technologies acquired in this project will directly benefit Hong Kong’s economy.

The project results have led to 2 M.Phil. theses, 1 Ph.D. thesis, 1 book, 3 invited book chapters, 12 journal papers, 6 conference papers and 10 invited plenary lectures/keynote speeches.

The HPC Cluster is essential to the project as the computation aiming on multiplicity and stability requires a super-high speed computer system with a large storage/memory space. 

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