Dr.-Ing. Xu Chu has successfully completed his habilitation at the University of Stuttgart, marking a significant milestone in his academic career. His habilitation colloquium took place on January 30, 2025, as part of the first-ever joint habilitation procedure between the Stuttgart Center for Simulation Science (SC SimTech) and Faculty 6, Aerospace Engineering and Geodesy. It highlights the university’s commitment to interdisciplinary research, not only within the frameworks of SimTech and the Collaborative Research Center SFB 1313 but also between faculties and institutions of the University.
Xu Chu was an active researcher in SimTech’s Project Network 1, which focuses on multiphase flows and porous media, and was associated to SFB 1313’s Research, investigating coupled porous-medium and free-flow systems. His academic journey began with a B.Sc. from Tongji University in Shanghai, China. He later obtained both his Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degrees from the University of Stuttgart. His doctoral research at the Institute of Nuclear Technology and Energy Systems laid the foundation for his expertise in computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer. From 2016 to 2019 he was a junior group leader at the Institute of Aerospace Thermodynamics, where he specialized in multi-X thermofluids, integrating numerical, experimental, and data-driven approaches. From early 2021 to May 2024, he worked as a PostDoc at SC SimTech, further strengthening his expertise and contributing to the center’s research agenda. His research spans applications in energy, aerospace, and biomedical fields, reinforcing his interdisciplinary impact. As an educator, he has developed and taught six courses across three faculties at the University of Stuttgart, covering topics such as incompressible fluids, turbulent flows, porous media flow, and computational fluid dynamics. He has also mentored over ten Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers. His commitment to academic excellence extends to serving as a guest editor for Physics of Fluids and the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, as well as reviewing for over 20 leading academic journals. Since May 2024, Dr.-Ing. Chu has been a Senior Lecturer in Data-Centric Engineering at the University of Exeter, UK, where he continues to expand his research at the intersection of thermal fluids and data-driven engineering.
At the core of his habilitation lies his thesis, Thermofluids with Porous Media, which explores complex fluid dynamics in porous structures, with a particular focus on turbulence, heat transfer, and coupled flow interactions. His research is highly relevant to various industrial and environmental applications, including geothermal energy, fuel cells, and biological fluid transport. His work directly contributes to SimTech’s vision of advancing simulation science by using Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) and linear stability analysis to investigate the instability and transition behavior within porous media. By modeling porous structures as staggered arrays of square cylinders, he identifies key instability modes, providing new insights into the fundamental mechanisms governing turbulence in confined geometries. Beyond this, his habilitation presents a microscopic analysis of turbulence within porous media, revealing how flow structures fragment at higher Reynolds numbers. His study of convective heat transfer demonstrates that increased thermal efficiency is accompanied by a disproportionate rise in pressure loss, a finding with direct implications for engineering applications.
A particularly innovative aspect of his research is the exploration of the interaction between free-flow turbulence and porous media, a key focus within SFB 1313. He applies information-theoretic methods such as transfer entropy to quantify energy exchange, enhancing the understanding of causal interactions in fluid dynamics. This approach bridges the gap between computational fluid dynamics and data science, a topic that has gained increasing relevance within SimTech’s predictive simulation strategies. In the later chapters of his thesis, Dr. Chu introduces a machine learning-based reduced-order modeling approach that compresses DNS data by 99% while preserving essential flow features, significantly improving computational efficiency.
Xu Chu’s habilitation was met with high praise from several esteemed experts in the field. Rainer Helmig, University of Stuttgart, emphasized the thesis as a state-of-the-art contribution to turbulence modeling in porous media, integrating advanced numerical simulations with practical applications. Andrey V. Kuznetsov, North Carolina State University at Raleigh, commended his pioneering work on integrating transfer entropy with turbulence modeling, highlighting it as a major step forward in causal inference for fluid dynamics. Michael Manhart, Technical University of Munich, in turn, underscored the significance of Chu’s DNS-based studies, which provide unprecedented insights into turbulent flow and heat transfer in porous media. Their evaluations confirm the quality of his work and its implications for both fundamental research and industrial applications.
SC SimTech has repeatedly proven to be a significant career booster for early-career researchers, as exemplified by former members such as Alexander Schlaich, Luiz Chamon, and Paul Bürkner, who have successfully advanced their careers after their time at SimTech.