When
Thursday, April 16, 2026, at 4:00 p.m.
Ben Xu
Assistant Professor
Presidential Frontier Faculty Fellow
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Houston
"Multiphase and Multiscale Transport Phenomena: From Concentrated Solar Power System to Laser-Assisted Printing"
AME Lecture Hall, Room S202 | Zoom link
Abstract: Multiphase heat transfer and fluid flow span a wide range of length scales, impacting both large-scale energy systems and microscale manufacturing technologies. This talk explores transport phenomena across scales, from hundred-meter-scale concentrated solar power (CSP) receiver systems to millimeter-scale porous structures for thermal management, and down to micron- and submicron-scale bubble and jet dynamics in laser-assisted printing. We will discuss how cross-scale computational tools, including Molecular Dynamics (MD), Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM), and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), can be used to analyze and optimize heat transfer and flow behavior across these different regimes. In addition, advanced manufacturing (AM) provides a powerful route for fabricating structures and materials based on simulation and modeling results. Deep learning has also emerged as an effective tool for data-driven porous media design and manufacturing process control. By integrating numerical modeling, experiments and advanced manufacturing approaches, this talk highlights both fundamental challenges and emerging opportunities in engineering heat and mass transfer across vastly different scales.
Bio: Dr. Ben Xu has been an assistant professor and Presidential Frontier Faculty Fellow in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Houston since January 2023. He obtained his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona in 2015 and his supervisor is Perry Li. Xu received his MS degree from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2010 and his BS degree from Wuhan University in 2007. Before joining UH, Xu worked as tenure-track faculty at Mississippi State University (MSU) and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV).
Xu is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the ASME Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering, the UH President’s Circle Award and the DoD MEEP Faculty Fellow. Xu is co-chair of the Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee in ASTFE (American Society of Thermal Fluids Engineers) and the ASME IMECE 2026 Track Chair for Track 9: Energy. In 2024, he served as the general chair for the ASME Energy Sustainability conference. He was also the chair and vice chair of the Renewable Energy and Energy Conversion committee in the Advanced Energy System Division at ASME from 2020 to 2022. Xu is currently a member of the editorial board of Advances in Manufacturing and The Innovation Energy. Xu has served as PI and co-PI on multiple projects funded by DOE, DOD, USDA, NSF and NASA, and has attracted total research funding of more than $2 million. He has more than 100 peer-reviewed journal publications and conference papers and his total citations on Google Scholar exceed 3,000.