Digital Twin Technology

1.       We are recruiting a UK home PhD candidate for the project "Liquid hydrogen fuelling process simulation – paving the way for digital twinning hydrogen safety", fully funded by BP and DNV, which will start on 1st October 2023. Don't hesitate to get in touch with Dr Henry Tan (h.tan@abdn.ac.uk) if you are interested.

 

As we strive towards a cleaner and more sustainable future, hydrogen energy carriers have emerged as a promising solution. Hydrogen, in its liquid form, is likely to be a preferred carrier over intermediate regional distances and is currently being examined for use in transport vehicles, such as long-haul trucks. However, liquid hydrogen, being extremely cold and distinct in behaviour from most other liquids, presents unique safety challenges that need to be addressed to ensure efficient, safe, and widespread use.

There has been a significant amount of research conducted on the behaviour of liquid hydrogen in the event of a process safety incident. The primary focus of most of this research has been the response to these incidents, with less emphasis on understanding how to prevent or minimize them through effective operational practices and barriers. This project aims to bridge this gap in knowledge and develop a safer hydrogen fuelling process.

Industry trends point towards the implementation of digital twin technology for safety management. However, in the case of liquid hydrogen fuelling processes, the lack of an actual operation to mimic poses a hurdle. This project envisions a future where we will simulate the liquid hydrogen fuelling process, use the results to predict potential risks, and feed these back into the real system to improve safety measures.

This project will primarily focus on stage A of this vision: conducting liquid hydrogen fuelling process simulation. We aim to understand the unique challenges of handling liquid hydrogen by drawing on existing research and standards. Our goal is to develop a process model for the unloading, storage, gasification, and compression system of liquid hydrogen. We will also be leveraging Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling of a liquid hydrogen spill using ANSYS-FLUENT software.

This project will also incorporate hydrogen explosion experiments in collaboration with BP and DNV. This collaborative effort aims to validate the risk assessments generated from our simulations, contributing significantly to our understanding of liquid hydrogen safety.

The development of a validated and reliable liquid hydrogen fuelling process simulation is a significant stride towards creating a digital twin of the hydrogen safety system. This project will form a critical foundation for future stages of development, including lab-scale digital twin implementation and eventually full-scale digital twin application for hydrogen safety.

Through these efforts, we hope to enhance the safety, reliability, and operational efficiency of liquid hydrogen fuelling processes, bringing us a step closer to realizing the full potential of hydrogen as a sustainable energy carrier.

 

2.       Dr Henry Tan gives a presentation, "Applying Digital Twin Technology to Enhance the Safety of Wind and Hydrogen Energy Systems", at the Third International Conference on Computational Science and AI in Industry (CSAI 2023). 28^th - 30^th August 2023, Trondheim, Norway.

3.       Current PhD projects (related to the application of digital twin technology) in Dr Henry Tans group:

·         Nur Hasnita Hamzah, Safety and risk assessment of offshore wind turbines: the human factor perspective.

Supervision Team:

o   Leading supervisor: Dr Henry Tan;

o   2^nd supervisor: Prof Richard D. Neilson;

o   Industry supervisor: Dr Fuzzy Bitar FREng, Senior Vice President Health, Safety, Environment & Carbon, BP;

o   Industry supervisor: Dr Maureen Jennings, Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor.

 

·         Mohamed Elnashar, Safety in green hydrogen production and storage.

Supervision Team:

 

o   Leading supervisor: Dr Henry Tan;

o   2^nd supervisor: Dr Waheed Afzal;

o   Industry supervisor: Dr Fuzzy Bitar FREng, Senior Vice President Health, Safety, Environment & Carbon, BP;

o   Industry supervisor: Dr Maureen Jennings, Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor.

 

4.       In collaboration with the Institute of Technological Sciences, Wuhan University, as Chair Professor, 2019-present.

o   Mechanics Simulation of Femtosecond Laser Chip Micro-nano Machining Based on Multiscale High Performance Computing

Abstract: Femtosecond laser micromachining is the cutting-edge technology of micromachining technology. The key of which is to control the evolution of defects such as dislocations and cracks. The current technical bottleneck lies in the lack of quantitative description and analysis of complex mechanical phenomena in extreme situations. Through multiscale parallel computing, this project proposes a molecular dynamics time-accelerated computing scheme based on Bayesian network machine-learning to simulate the evolution of large-scale complex systems. Molecular Dynamics and Material Point Method are combined to simulate the dynamics of defects in femtosecond laser micromachining. Three experimental observations will verify the simulation results: the defect repair using femtosecond laser; the elongated deformation of the laser-affected zone observed in during femtosecond laser ceramic welding; and the fractal structure self-organized on the silicon wafer surface. This project provides "Micro-nano machining mechanics simulation software based on multiscale high-performance computing". As a simulation example, the software is used to design the micro-nano processing technology of femtosecond laser cutting of low-dielectric-constant silicon wafers.

 

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING

o   High performance computing - University of Aberdeen, UK

o   High performance computing - Wuhan University, China

o   SAMRAI, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA

o   Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), Department of Energy, USA

o   Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

o   Center for the Simulation of Accidental Fires and Explosions, University of Utah, USA

 

MULTISCALE SIMULATION

o   Keynote Speaker. 2016. In vivo surface roughness evolution of a stressed metallic implant. The 3rd International Symposium on Multiscale Material Mechanics and Multiphysics and Sustainable Applications, Hainan-Island, China, 6-10 November 2016.

o   In 2015, the paper "Atomistic/continuum simulation of interfacial fracture Part II: Atomistic/dislocation/continuum simulation" was selected by Acta Mechanica Sinica for the "Special Award for Outstanding Papers in the 30th Anniversary of the Publication".

o   As one of the pioneers in combined atomistic and continuum simulation of material processes, Dr Tan shared the First Prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award by the State Education Commission of China, 1995.

o   H. Tan and W. Yang, 1994. Atomistic/continuum simulation of interfacial fracture part I: Atomistic simulation.

o   H. Tan and W. Yang, 1994. Atomistic/continuum simulation of interfacial fracture Part II: Atomistic/dislocation/continuum simulation.

o   W. Yang, H. Tan and T. Guo, 1994. Evolution of crack tip process zones.