Chris Degroot, Phd, Peng Email & Phone Number

London, On, Ca

London, On, Ca

London, Ontario, Ca

I provide consulting services to clients, primarily in the area of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The main industries that I work with are in the areas of (i) water and wastewater treatment, (ii) heat transfer and thermal management, and (iii) custom engineering software development.

London, Ontario, Ca

I worked as a Research Scientist at Trojan Technologies where I contributed my specialized knowledge of Computational Fluid Dynamics to the modelling and optimization of wastewater treatment systems. In addition to my numerical work, I contributed significantly to experimental/pilot work conducted at pollution control facilities in the municipality of London, Ontario. Some of the projects and activities that I have been involved in include:• Development of a theoretical model for flow and solids separation in a rotating belt filter and implementation of numerical solution algorithm, including (i) parameter estimation based on minimization of error between model and experimental results and (ii) uncertainty propagation using automatic differentiation to evaluate partial derivatives of output variables with respect to input variables.• Development of a User Defined Function (UDF) library and graphical user interface (GUI) for modeling cake filtration in rotating belt filters within the ANSYS Fluent CFD solver. Capabilities include calculation of solids removal and accumulation on a moving filter, dynamic calculation of filter permeability and removal efficiency, and several adaptive boundary conditions relevant to the control logic used in full-scale filters.• Development of a CFD-based model for wastewater disinfection using peracids (specifically peracetic acid), including a novel PID-based control algorithm to adjust the chemical dosage, under varying flow and wastewater quality, in order to meet a target integrated dose before discharge of the treated water. • Design and development of a gravity filtration column with continuous water level sensing in order to test wastewater filtration properties for use in CFD and other numerical models.• Management and guidance of research projects for student and postdoctoral interns.• Writing and presenting research papers for national and international conferences.• Preparation of research grant proposals.

Waterloo, Ontario, Ca

This was a postdoctoral research position funded through the Mitacs Elevate Postdoctoral Fellowship where research work was conducted in close collaboration with industry partner, ANSYS Inc.The Mitacs Elevate program is quite unique as compared to other postdoctoral fellowship programs in Canada in that the Fellow spends most of their time working within the facilities of an industrial partner, using their expertise to solve a genuine challenge facing the partner. Through this program, the Fellow not only has to opportunity to continue developing their research talents, but also has a chance to learn business and management skills through direct experience with their partner organization as well as through effective training workshops provided as a part of the Fellowship program.I have been a strong advocate for the Mitacs organization since beginning my fellowship. As a result I was given the opportunity to travel to Ottawa alongside Mitacs executives to meet with several Canadian members of parliament and other government officials to share my experiences in the program.

Canonsburg, Pa, Us

Developed code for ANSYS CFD solvers as a part of the Numerics team. Substantial effort was put into enhancing the porous media modelling capabilities in ANSYS CFX, particularly the interface conditions between fluid and porous regions. Significant R&D work was conducted on forward sensitivity analysis, using automatic differentiation based on operator overloading, to compute derivatives of all variables with respect to specific parameters of interest.Some key accomplishments and activities include:• Improved treatment of interfaces between fluid and porous regions that is more robust and accurate; developed and implemented new interface conditions for pressure and viscous stress balances as well as a stress jump condition; work was mentioned in "ANSYS CFX R15 Highlights" presentation at ANSYS Convergence UK conference• Significantly refactored code for monitoring CFD solution parameters (e.g. force monitors, residuals, etc.) to enhance modularity; implemented a proxy design pattern to access and report data on compute nodes from the host node• Gained expert-level knowledge of generating Python wrappers for C++ code using SWIG; assisted other developers in a number of code reviews as well as one-on-one to help them properly wrap their code

London, On, Ca

Conducted research in the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) during Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD studies under advisor Prof. Anthony G. Straatman. Gained significant experience developing finite volume CFD codes (both structured and unstructured) in Fortran 77 and Fortran 90. Extensively used the Message Passing Interface (MPI) system in conjunction with PETSc linear solvers to achieve parallelism.One of the major outcomes of doctoral research was the development of a new CFD code able to robustly and accurately solve fluid flow and heat transfer problems involving coupled fluid and porous regions with options for domain motion. The code has been primarily used in the following applications:- the study of heat transfer enhancement in metal foam heat sinks, including those made from graphite and aluminum foams, using a volume-averaged approach for modelling the porous regions;- simulation of pore-level transport phenomena in porous media such as cylinder arrays, metal foams, and human lung parenchyma to determine their effective medium properties for use in volume-averaged simulation models;- simulation of air flow in the human lung using a volume-averaged model for the small airways and parenchyma, coupled with a direct model in the large upper airways. The lung geometry was based on segmented CT scan images of patients, while an innovative moving grid formulation was used to drive the flow during the breathing cycle.The power of the code that was developed lies in the novel interface conditions that are used to maintain numerical accuracy and robustness where fluid and porous regions intersect, along with its ability to run on powerful high-performance computing resources, such as those of SHARCNET, which were used extensively over the course of this research project.

London, On, Ca

Teaching assistant for courses including thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, finite element analysis, internal combustion engines, and business.

London, On, Ca

Lecturer for Calculus 1000a.

Member of the Board of Directors for CFDSC which involved assisting in organization of annual conference, participation in scientific committees, assisting in management of day-to-day affairs, and website development and maintenance.

Ph.D., Computational Fluid Dynamics

M.E.Sc., Computational Fluid Dynamics

B.E.Sc., Mechanical Engineering