Mr Li-Herng Kao's bachelor's thesis focused on the further development of FST's proprietary Clearance-Averaged Pressure Model (CAPM). The aim of the thesis was to extend the existing framework, which could previously only be used to calculate annular clearances with an axial pressure difference, to calculate annular clearances typically occur in axial thrust balancers of centrifugal pumps. Mr. Kao extended the existing object-oriented framework with a corresponding software package.

Analogous to the extension of the CAPM for the calculation of annular gaps typical for thrust balancing devices, Mr Roman Hendricks worked on the further development of the framework for the calculation of multiphase flows in his bachelor thesis. The flow in the lubricating gap, which was previously assumed to be incompressible, is superimposed by gas bubbles entrained into the gap. The multiphase flow, consisting of liquid and gas phases, can now no longer be considered incompressible. Mr Hendricks extended the existing SIMPLE-C algorithm to implement the compressible governing equations and added an additional software package to the framework, which enables the CAPM to investigate bubbly flows in annular gaps reliably and efficiently.

We congratulate both on their successful graduation and wish them continued success.