Projects

Within the framework of C1 TRACESpace, this project will further develop the multi-fluid/Maxwell plasma computational model in COOLFluiD. This model allows for investigating the effects of collisions, chemical processes (ionization, recombination, charge exchange), anisotropic transport and radiation in weakly-to-fully ionized plasmas which cannot be characterized by traditionally used single-fluid MHD models. Following preliminary studies of ...

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) were introduced in 2009, only achieving 3.8% power conversion efficiency (PCE). A rapid increase in effiency has followed ever since, achieving already 23% PCE nowadays. In this perspective, it can already start to compete with crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells, which represent more than 90% of the market. Also, the abundancy of the materials and their low cost, combined with the low-temperature, simple ...

Solar energy accounts for 60% of the predicted growth in renewables in the next 5 years. Various research institutes have developed energy yield prediction models to accurately estimate the fluctuating power output of a crystalline Silicon (c-Si) PV. State of the art energy yield models for Silicon PV are available from various research organizations like Sandia Laboratories IMEC, TNO and NREL. These yield prediction models have given the ...

The Sun's corona is very hot. To understand how it is heated, it is important to know what happens for small and fast waves. These scales are at the moment inaccessible with the current instrumentation. In the two years from now, the newly launched Solar Orbiter spacecraft will for the first time observe the solar atmosphere with extremely high resolution and a fantastic temporal cadence in its Extreme Ultraviolet Imager. With this new ...

On-site measured data are increasingly combined with statistical techniques to create reduced-order models, which are used for evaluating a building's actual energy performance, model predictive control (MPC), defect detection, and energy grid optimization. Solar gains, the part of the buildings’ indoor energy gain contributed by the sun, play a vital role in the indoor heat balance and thermal dynamics. A precise estimation of dynamic solar ...

The objective of this project is to combine observations of the Sun and observations near the Earth in order to perform “linkage” analysis from the outer layers of the Sun’s atmosphere (solar corona) to the solar wind that blows out of this atmosphere towards the interplanetary space, so as to identify and constrain the mechanisms that heat the solar corona and accelerate the fast solar wind. We will use computational tools to track the solar ...

The solar atmosphere is in a dynamic state and ubiquitous waves can be observed in all layers. At the same time, above the photosphere, the temperature increases in the chromosphere and corona with increasing distance from the solar surface. It is yet not clear which non-thermal process supplies the upper layers with sufficient energy to maintain their temperature. This is termed the coronal heating problem. The ubiquitous waves in the solar ...