Siyu Meng

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Project title: AI-inspired design of functional materials

Supervisor: Dr. Yao Lu

Content: The third industrial or digital revolution began in the late 1900s, and its development has further promoted the process of industrialization. However, mature industrial technology makes nearly three-quarters of all energy produced by human beings wasted as waste heat. Moreover, waste heat has a lower utilization rate than ordinary energy due to its higher entropy, so how to recycle it more effectively is highly challenging. Waste heat is divided into different temperature ranges in the industry for better classification processing. Therefore, its reuse is a kaleidoscopic problem that requires a lot of innovation to solve different parts of the problem, especially since the conventional waste heat recovery system might only be suitable for a specific temperature range with certain limitations.

This project aims to establish an intelligent thermal insulation system with slippery surfaces that allow precise temperature control to achieve the reuse of waste heat. This system correlates the characteristics of the materials used to build the system and the conditions for selecting lubricants with rationalizing the design of conditions suitable for optimal use in practical applications with advanced artificial intelligence techniques. The optimized systems are then reproduced to fit the various waste heat temperatures. The results of this project are expected to be used in industrial factories and inspire new insights for designing functional materials in conjunction with artificial intelligence.

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