Dr Svetlana Tkachenko
- PhD, Mechanical Engineering, UNSW, Australia 2018
Dr Svetlana Tkachenko graduated with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at UNSW in 2018. Svetlana's PhD involved numerical modelling of buoyant turbulent fluid flow and heat transfer in a model of a double-skin building facade with photvoltaic (PV) modules on the outer skin, which suggested that higher wall emissivity on inner surfaces of such a facade leads to improvement in surface-to-surface wall radiation and resulting passive cooling rates.
After graduation, Svetlana has participated in research projects with industrial partners in the areas of aerodynamics for rotary wing aircraft, automotive applications for disk brakes, building ventilation for a three-storey building with passive evaporative downdraft cooling. In these projects, Svetlana has created a numerical model, and collaborated with fellow researchers, to devise improvements to the design of these systems, which would increase their resulting performance.
Dr Svetlana Tkachenko currently is a post-doctoral fellow at UNSW Faculty of Engineering, undertaking numerical modelling of fluid flow and heat transfer in the areas of renewable energy, building ventilation, and air conditioning. Her numerical modelling includes multi-phase modelling, study of new materials, and collaboration with industry to identify the requirements, limitations, and working objectives.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
- Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) grant "Research boost for solar panel efficiency and cost reduction" - "Reduced Solar Module Temperature" (2020-2023) - a Chief Investigator
- Finalist: 2022 GUD Excellence Awards at the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria in Melbourne. Disc Brakes Australia (DBA)’s submission showcased DBA’s successful collaboration with the University of NSW in the area of thermodynamic simulations in brake rotor development. The DBA submission successfully progressed to finalist stage, where contenders then had to submit their final bids in form of a 90-second video clip, thereby not only demonstrating their ability to innovate, but also challenging the Marketing teams on their videographic skillset. Svetlana's research contribution supervised by Dr Victoria Timchenko at UNSW Sydney involved numerical modeling of fluid flow and heat transfer for the vented disk brake design, and design optimization, with contributions to a parent and successful product manufacture.
My Research Supervision
Currently supervising
Two thesis students in the topics of renewable energy and one student in disk brake modeling.
Past thesis topics
- Contributed technical advice and assisted with supervision in the following undergraduate theses (available for download from UNSWorks website):
- 2022 Simulation analysis and optimisation of the braking system of UNSW Redback Racing’s FSAE vehicle (Evan, Favos)
- 2022 CFD and Thermal Modelling of Disc Brake Systems (Lau, Chi Hang)
- 2022 A thermal performance analysis of PV modules using computation fluid dynamics (Klisser, Ruby)
- 2022 Effects of ambient wind on the cooling of rooftop-mounted photovoltaic module (Phillips, Matthew)
- 2021 Wind tower and Passive cooling of large spaces in hot climates (Yang, Qian)
- 2021 Numerical modelling of photovoltaic module with natural convection cooling in rooftop on different heights of building rooftop (Suriawidjaja, Gilbert)
- Contributed technical advice to selected tasks within the PhD students theses research (available for download from UNSWorks website):
- 2018 On the noise generated by a ship propeller (Ahmed, Shakeel)
- 2018 Coherent structures and impact of the external thermal stratification in a transitional natural convection vertical channel (Thebault, Martin)
- Contributed technical advice to undergraduate students theses research (available for download from UNSWorks website soon):
- 2023 Development of safety features for harm reduction in Formula 1 racing (Goodenough, Alexandra)
My Teaching
Previously demonstrated/tutored for the following:
- MECH4620 Computational Fluid Dynamics
- Introduction to ANSYS CFX and Fluent
- Defining a CFD problem
- Creating and/or Importing Geometry in Design Modeler
- Mass and momentum conservation and Navier-Stokes equations
- Kinematic properties of fluids, dynamic similarity and energy conservation
- Turbulence
- Computational methods – discretisation
- Solution Procedures
- Post processing – analysis of results. Validation and verification
- MATH2089 Numerical Methods and Statistics
- Floating point format
- Linear Systems
- Least Squares and Polynomial Interpolation
- Numerical Differentiation and Integration
- Differential Equations