AME Seminar: Vitaliy Yurkiv

Abstract
Energy is an essential part of our lives for a variety of reasons, and it can be found in different forms, however, energy is often present in a state, which cannot be directly used for targeted applications. Thus, a suitable conversion process is required to transform it from one state to a more useful form. Furthermore, energy may be available in such low amounts or in places that it is not economically feasible to invest in its retrieval. For that reason, research on various methods to store and transport energy from place to place is of great importance. Thus, this combined energy conversion and storage strategy offers a unique opportunity to develop the best-performing energy management technologies that are indispensable for a sustainable society. It is this opportunity that forms the basis for Yurkiv's principal research interest, which seeks to discover how the understanding of fundamental processes may help to improve higher hierarchy systems. In particular, his primary research interests focus on studying various energy storage (secondary battery type) and conversion (fuel/electrolysis cells) technologies. In this talk, Yurkiv will describe multi-scale/multi-physics modeling and machine learning of secondary (rechargeable) batteries and the proper coupling between scales and methods. Several examples of his research, such as battery thermal runaway, Li/Zn dendrites formation, and electrode phase change using the density functional theory, phase-field modeling, electric vehicle system modeling, and deep learning, will be given.

Bio
Vitaliy Yurkiv is presently an assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona. Prior to the UA, Dr. Yurkiv was working as a research professor at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Yurkiv received his Ph.D. (12/2010) at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Computing (IWR) from Heidelberg University (Heidelberg, Germany) focusing on the modeling and simulation of energy storage and conversion technologies. After obtaining his Ph.D. degree, he worked  (01/2011 – 11/2015) as a research associate at the Institute of Engineering Thermodynamics, German Aerospace Center, as well as Stuttgart University (Stuttgart, Germany). He has published 43 research papers in various refereed journals, as well as numerous conference proceedings. He has been working on numerous research projects in industry and academia.