Motivation. The vast subject of Transport Phenomena is gaining importance in today’s technology perspective, as momentum, heat and mass transport are found in many engineering processes, for both industrial and environmental frameworks. Environmental flows in porous media, wind patterns around city buildings along with traffic pollutants, the thermal response of water-saturated substrates when subject to drying by microwaves or ultrasounds, the formation of harmful compounds in food during cooking, the colonization of bacteria or the progression of cancer: the applications of Transport Phenomena in our lives or in professional activities are endless.

In this course, an introductory approach is provided which presents these topics through an orderly application of partial differential equations (PDEs), leading to the exploitation of mathematical fields through their analytical or numerical solution. Modeling of PDEs-driven phenomena has its inner workings that need to be recognized and understood. The final goal is that one can achieve a process virtualization, i.e., the replica of what we observe in the process reality and around us.

Background. In the past 10 years of my teaching and research activity, I have been dealing with many cases of thermal processing to multiphase substrates. I soon realized that intertwined occurrences were frequent in these cases: to complete the study on momentum and heat transport, one must include mass transport for these mechanisms were always linked each other due to the inherent phase or composition-changing. In this course, a generalized procedure to model this interdependence is presented.

Opportunity. Over the years, the computing technology has considerably evolved and so had the engineering analysis and modeling that exploits it. Nowadays, with the development of robust and efficient numerical techniques, the computation of interdependent Transport Phenomena is a valid tool to realistic process description.

In a broad sense, the simultaneous existence of more mechanisms at once in the same process, cutting across the fields of physics, chemistry, mechanics, and biotechnology, can be called multiphysics.

Engineering graduates face more frequently with modeling challenges. Many academic programs offer specific courses but they are usually restricted to chemical engineering curricula. Nevertheless, the unifying language of Transport Phenomena has its own transversal validity along almost any engineering specialization.

Along with their physical, analytical and numerical frameworks (even at the present introductory level), students become more adaptable and versatile to succeed in a knowledge-based global marketplace. This course represent a starting thrust to design, simulation and  optimization of many kinds of industrial and environmental process modeling.

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