The Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters tragically illustrated the risks associated with the civilian nuclear industry. In Belgium, there are two nuclear power plants (Doel and Tihange), whilst two others are located near its borders on the banks of the Meuse River (Chooz) and Scheldt Estuary (Borselle).

In recent years, the size of offshore wind turbines has grown significantly. While this increases the power that can be harnessed from the wind, it also increases the flexibility of the blades, which can lead to aero-elastic effects.

The ambitious goal of reaching net-zero emissions in aviation by 2050 can only be met by science-based disruptive innovations, including those that have the potential to reduce aircraft structural weight.

In the context of the energy transition, biomass represents a pivotal player for a sustainable future. This thesis delves into the multifaceted role of biomass, exploring its potential, its final uses and the challenges it faces in shaping a sustainable energy landscape.

Depuis des siècles, les barrages permettent de gérer les ressources en eau à des fins de production et de protection contre les aléas climatiques. Néanmoins, la construction et le fonctionnement des barrages ont des impacts socio-écologiques non négligeables à l'amont, comme à l'aval des barrages. En particulier, ces ouvrages viennent perturber la continuité sédimentaire des rivières.

Press hardenable steels (PHS) coated with Al-Si alloy are widely used in the automotive industry owing to their good mechanical properties (YS > 1200 MPa and TS > 1500 MPa). The presence of Al-Si coating prevents oxidation and decarburization of steel during austenitization.

Lattices materials range from open and closed cell foams across a wide range of length scale to micro-architectured, multi-phase solids that are manufactured by additive manufacture. Size effects are important too: lattices with struts of small diameter are subjected to high gradients of strain in bending and are consequently have a higher material strength than large scale lattices.

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This study introduces an unsteady panel method designed to solve potential flows around rigid airfoils and self-propelling eel-like bodies exhibiting undulatory swimming motion. The flow model represents the boundary-layer as an infinitesimally thin vortex sheet on the body surface, detaching only at the wedged trailing-edge of the body in the form of point vorticity.

This talk focuses on accelerating the design of microfluidic heat sinks via topology optimization of the conjugate heat transfer problem. The computational bottleneck of this iterative process is the numerical solution of the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations due to their nonlinearity.