Andrea Pinardi
PhD thesis title: Development of design methodologies for two-phase heat pump expanders
Academic Tutor: Giacomo Persico
Academic Supervisor: Paolo Gaetani
PhD cycle: 40° (see all student profiles of the same cycle > LINK)
BSc: Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano
MSc: Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano
Abroad period at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (Sint-Genesius-Rode, Belgium) from October 2026 to March 2027
Thesis abstract
Heat pumps offer an opportunity to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced by domestic heating, traditionally carried out using fossil fuels. Expanding the working fluid in a turbine, rather than in a valve, would increase the performance of the heat pump, but several aspects complicate this. The fluid expands from subcooled liquid to two-phase mixture, and the phase change, with its associated drop in sound speed, promotes the transition from the low subsonic regime to the supersonic one. The aim of this PhD project is to create design methodologies for these two-phase expanders, for which no reliable methods are currently available.
Personal interest in my research theme
What I find fascinating about this topic is the possibility of developing new methods based on the fundamental equations of fluid dynamics and thermodynamics. The possibility of developing new equations from scratch, with little to no empirical correlations, is seldom encountered in engineering, and it is an opportunity to show how a more mathematical treatment of fluid dynamics can be reconciled with the practical aspects of turbomachinery design.
