On May 23rd, at the invitation of Prof. Tang Zhaosheng, Prof. Gan Yixiang, Associate Dean of the School of Civil Engineering and Deputy Director of Sydney Nano Institute of the University of Sydney, Australia, gave a lecture entitled "Multiphase Flow in Heterogeneous Porous Media: A Pore-scale Perspective" in the conference room of Room 111, Zhu Gongshan Building. Porous Media: A Pore-scale Perspective".
Rooted in the study of multiphase interactions in porous media, Professor Gan Yixiang told the students and faculty how to identify problems in engineering applications, how to propose appropriate research programmes according to the research objectives, how to summarise the experimental results to address the key scientific issues, and how to cooperate with international outstanding scholars. He presented the origin, status and development of a pioneering research in an easy-to-understand and interesting language. The research mainly adopts numerical simulation to systematically study the effects of structural changes of porous media and the wettability of particle surfaces on fluid displacement, and controls the fingering phenomenon of immiscible fluids through independently designed microstructures, and proposes a phase diagram of fluid displacement patterns that integrates pore structure, wettability, and flow conditions, which provides a mechanism to manipulate the fluid distribution for the enhancement of energy storage, such as underground gas reservoirs. The results of this study are summarised in the following table.
After the lecture, Prof Gan Yixiang had an in-depth and close communication and discussion with the students and teachers on related issues. Teachers and students sought valuable advice from Professor Gan Yixiang on experimental design and result analysis in the light of their own research, and Professor Gan Yixiang is looking forward to further academic cooperation with Professor Tang Zhaosheng, so as to make a breakthrough in the field of unsaturated soils. This lecture not only provided new thoughts and insights for the research of moisture field in unsaturated soils, but also provided a valuable learning opportunity for the researchers of our centre to exercise their scientific thinking and improve their scientific research quality.
Biographical Note of Professor Gan Yixiang: Associate Dean (External Affairs) of the School of Civil Engineering and Associate Director of the Sydney Nano Institute at the University of Sydney, Australia, he obtained his PhD degree in Engineering Science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany in 2008, with a thesis that achieved the highest German honours (summa cum Iaude). He then spent nearly two years as a postdoctoral researcher at KIT before joining the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney in 2010, where he was awarded tenure and progressively promoted to Associate Professor. During this time, he has been invited by several leading international universities and research institutes for visiting research and long-term collaborations, including Ecole des Ponts (France) and Oxford (UK). His research interests include the mechanics and physics of granular materials and porous media, with a focus on the inhomogeneity of materials and fine-scale structures, as well as multiphase and multiphysics properties. Applications include new energy sources and sustainable building materials, and since 2010, he has led Australian and international research projects totalling over A$3 million, published more than 150 papers in international journals, and trained more than 30 post-doctoral, doctoral and master's students.