Dr Santiago Martelo López

Job: Naval and Ocean Engineer

Employer: IH Cantabria (Fundación Instituto de Hidráulica Ambiental de Cantabria)

PhD Thesis: Numerical modelling of turbulent interfacial flows and fluid-structure interaction 

PhD Supervisors: Dr Zhihua Xie and Professor Shunqi Pan

Background
Santi was a PhD student on the WISE CDT programme between 2018 and 2022, where he was based at Cardiff University.  His PhD thesis is entitled “Large eddy simulations of two-phase flows around complex 3D geometries” and he successfully defended his viva on 16th June 2023.  Santi is now a Naval and Ocean Engineer at IH Cantabria (Fundación Instituto de Hidráulica Ambiental de Cantabria).

Before joining the WISE CDT, Santi graduated with a Master’s degree in Industrial Mathematics.  He completed internships at the Astican Shipyard and with IH Cantabria, his currently employer.  Santi gained experience working as a Junior Engineer in repair and conversion of oceangoing ships and offshore structures, as well as R&D projects with FEM/CFD software and other numerical methods for modelling hydro-mechanics of marine renewable devices.

A key aspect of Santi’s PhD project was improving efficiency and developing simulation technologies in CFD software packages for modelling turbulent flows, waves, wind and current effects on both fixed and floating offshore structures; for instance, adaptive mesh and turbulence models; Immersed Boundary and Galerkin Discontinuous methods. Among practical case studies where to apply the skills gained during his PhD are ensuring reliability when designing marine artefacts, checking what key systems may be prone to failure due to structural loading from wind and waves, increasing operational time of crane vessels, floating platforms for wind turbines, TEC (Tidal Energy Converters) and WEC (Wave Energy Converters) units under rough weather conditions.

Research Interests

  • Applications of artificial neural networks to CFD simulations.
  • Performing multi-body simulations for studying the interaction between floating artefacts.
  • Optimisation methods and integral design of floating platforms for marine renewables.
  • Scouring effects around supports of heavy lift vessels for the installation of wind turbines.