Civil aviation contributes to climate change through its greenhouse gas emissions on the one hand and its particulate emissions (soot, organic aerosols, contrails, etc.) on the other.

However, current estimates remain highly uncertain, with discrepancies reaching nearly 50% in various international studies. These uncertainties are primarily due to a lack of knowledge about the mechanisms governing pollutant formation in aviation, particularly particulate emissions. Reducing these uncertainties is a key challenge for the aviation industry, as the current knowledge gaps hinder efforts to mitigate the sector’s environmental impact.

The proposed research aims to improve our understanding of the formation of submicron aerosols and their role in the formation of aircraft-generated condensation trails (contrails).

The selected candidate will use a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver based on Large Eddy Simulation (LES) (FLUDILES) and/or Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) (STAR-CCM+), coupled with a Lagrangian model for chemistry and microphysics. This code has been developed and validated for a reference jet plume, including soot particles, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and contrails. Numerical simulations will be conducted to identify breakthrough technologies for ultra-efficient reduction of particulate emissions at the source.