• Process engineering
• Modelling and simulation 
• Particle transportation
• Particle separation
• Reacting multiphase flow
• Microfluidics
• Non-Newtonian fluid flow
• Flow instability

Conference Organization

• A member of the Organizing Committee for “the 1st International Symposium on Computational Particle Technology and Multiphase Processes” and “The 2nd International Symposium On Computational Particle Technology & The 13th CSIRO International Conference on CFD in the Minerals and Process Industries”
• A member of the Technical Committee for “The 1st International Conference on Mineral Engineering and Materials”.
• Session chairman at international conferences: “The 7th Congress on Particle Technology, “Physical Separation’11”, “the 7th DEM7”, “The 2nd International Symposium on CPT”, “8th APCChE Congress”, “International Symposium on 3M R&D advanced Technology”

Peer Review

• Reviewed 16+ ARC DP/LP/DECRA proposals and Chile FONDECYT proposals
• Guest editor of “Pump and Pumping Systems” for Advances in Mechanical Engineering
• Assessor of 4 Australian PhD and Master’s theses
• Reviewed 550+ manuscripts for 64+ international journals in my field  (Please visit Publons for details)

Research

Dr Kuang's research interests centre around Computational Process Engineering. A specific focus is on the development and application of numerical models at different time and length scales, with the support of physical experiments, for the fundamental and applied research on particle-fluid flow and granular dynamics. The involved models mainly include Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), discrete element model (DEM), population balance model, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), CFD-DEM, LBM-DEM, two-fluid model, kinetic theory, volume of fraction (VOF). The research topics cover particle transportation (e.g. in pneumatic/hydraulic conveying, microchannel, hydraulic fracture of shale gas [proppant placement], non-Newtonian fluid system), particle separation (e.g. by sand screen, hydrocyclone, gas cyclone, dense medium cyclone, in-line pressure jig, microchannel, nanofiltration device [water purification]), multi-phase reacting flows (e.g. in metallurgical reactors for production of iron, steel, aluminium).

Current and past projects

•  2021-2021  Investigation of flow regimes and transition along pulverized coal (PC) conveying pipelines. BlueScope Steel. Total grant: AU$61K.Lead chief investigator. Rank: 1/2. 

• 2017-2019  Model studies of three-dimensional distributions within blast furnace for reliable and efficient operations. Baosteel-Australia Joint Research and Development Centre (BA16002) and ARC Research Hub (IH140100035). Total grant: AU$400K. Lead chief investigator. Rank: 1/5. 

• 2016-2020  Particle-scale modelling of particle-fluid flows in gas and oil extraction. ARC LP (LP160100819, collaborated with Weir Minerals and BePIONEER). Total grant: AU$1.2M. Chief Investigator. Rank: 3/6. 

• 2016-2021  Research Hub for Computational Particle Technology. ARC Research Hub (IH140100035, collaborated with JITRI, Longking, Baosteel, and Rio Tinto).Total grant: AU$12M. Chief Investigator. Rank: 12/31.  Project leader for subprojects of “Integrated BF process model”; “Pneumatic conveying for fly ash”; “Hydrocyclones”. Details can be found in ARC Hub for Computational Particle Technology

• 2011-2014  Particle-scale study of pneumatic conveying bends (AU$8K in 2011); Micromechanic modelling and analysis of dense-phase pneumatic transport of powders (AU$6K in 2012); A multi-scale study of flow instability within pneumatic and hydraulic conveying systems (AU$5K in 2013); Towards fundamentals underlying separators of nanopore structure (4.9K in 2014), UNSW Faculty Research Grant program. Total grant: AU$25K, sole Chief Investigator.

• Publications

In Computational Process Engineering, Dr Kuang published 90+ papers including 1 co-edited special issue, 3 invited reviews and 77 journal papers collected in ISI Web of Science. The number of citations from these publications equals 2000+ (H-index=24) according to Google Scholar as of 2021. Over the past five years, 57 journal papers have been published.

Guest lectures

AT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES

Plenary

• Particle scale modeling and analysis of gas-solid flow in pneumatic conveying, The 8th International Conference for Conveying and Handling of Particulate Solids(CHOPS), Tel Aviv, Israel, 3-7 May 2015.

Keynote

• Pipeline conveying of bulk materials: Modelling and application, 2nd Conference of Computational Process Engineering, Video Conference, 16-17 July 2020.
• Multiscale modelling and analysis of particle-fluid flow systems: Some examples, 18th Asian Pacific Confederation of Chemical Engineering (APCChE) Congress, Sapporo, Japan, 23-27 September 2019.
• CFD study of ironmaking blast furnace: Recent model development and application, The 13th CSIRO International Conference on CFD in the Minerals and Process Industries, Melbourne, Australia, 4-8 December 2018.
• Modelling and application of hydrocyclones, The 1st Japan-Australia Symposium on Advanced Modeling & Simulation for Industrial Powder System, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 14 December 2017.

Invited

• 3D modelling of ironmaking blast toward industrial applications. The International Symposium on Minerals, Metallurgic and Materials Research and Development Advanced Technology, Nanchang, China, 4-5 January 2020.
• Three-dimensional modelling of blast furnace with layered cohesive zone, The 7th Australia-China-Japan Joint Symposium on Iron and Steelmaking, Suzhou, China, 4-7 September 2018.
• Numerical investigation of the inner profiles of ironmaking blast furnaces, The 6thAustralia-China-Japan Joint Symposium on Iron and Steelmaking, Melbourne, Australia, 23-26 November 2016.
• Lattice Boltzmann investigation of the negative wake behind spherical particles in power-law fluid flows, The 7th International Conference on Discrete Element Methods (DEM7), Dalian, China, 1-4 August 2016.
• CFD modeling and analysis of shaft gas injection into oxygen blast furnaces, The First International Workshop on Computational Particle Technology and Multiphase Processes, Suzhou, China, 9-12 March 2016.
• Discrete particle simulation of complex pneumatic conveying systems, The 7th Congress on Particle Technology, Beijing, China, 19-22 May 2014.

 At UNIVERSITIES 

• Computer modelling and simulation in Process Engineering – Part II: particle separation & particle-fluid reacting flow, Northeastern University, China, Online lecture, 28 July 2020, totalling 2 hours.
• Computer modelling and simulation in Process Engineering – Part I: particle transportation, Northeastern University, China, Online lecture, 27 July 2020, totalling 2 hours.
• Numerical study of particle-fluid flow: From fundamentals towards industrial applications, 2nd International Seminar on Resilience Engineering, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, 13 December 2017, totalling 45 minutes.

Please email to shibo.kuang@monash.edu if you plan to pursue PhD degree with him at Monash.

Current and past PhD projects

Mr Mohammad Fazli (Joint supervision with Prof Murray Rudman)
DNS study of non-Newtonian fluid coarse particle suspension

Mr Jun Li (Joint supervision with Prof Aibing Yu and Dr Zheng Qi)
Modelling of proppant transport in fracture

Miss Jing Li (Joint supervision with Associate/Prof Ruiping Zou)
Modelling of blast furnace

Miss Noor Ilyana Ismaii (Joint supervision with Prof Aibing Yu)
Modelling of screen plugging and erosion in the petroleum industry

Mr Lingling Liu (Joint supervision with Prof Aibing Yu and Dr Baoyu Guo)
Modelling of blast furnace

Mr Enzhu Zheng (Joint supervision with Prof Murray Rudman and Dr Andrew Chryss )
DNS-DEM modelling of non-Newtonian fluid-particle flow

Miss Ming Wang (exchange from China University of Petroleum,Beijing)
Modelling of fluidization

Mr Yong Zhao (exchange from Huazhong University of Science and Technology) (Joint supervision with Dr Gerald Pereira)
LBM modelling of multiphase flows

Miss Memeng Zhou (Joint supervision with Assoicate/Prof Ruiping Zou and Prof Kun Luo)
Modelling of particle-liquid flow

Mr Lulu Jiao (Joint supervision with Prof Aibing Yu)
Development and application of blast furnace process model

Mr Fei Xiao (exchange from Southwest Petroleum University)
Modelling of gas pipeline erosion

Dr Yaqing Zhang (exchange from Zhejiang University)
CFD modelling of nanofiltration membrane

Dr Siddhartha Shrestha (Joint supervision with Dr Zongyan Zhou)
Particle scale modelling of bubble dynamics in bubbling fluidized beds of ellipsoids

Dr Zheng Qi (Joint supervision with Prof Aibing Yu)
Lattice Boltzmann investigation on non-Newtonian fluid-particle systems

Dr Zhen Miao (Joint supervision with Prof Aibing Yu)
Modeling and analysis of pneumatic conveying of pulverised coal in the blast furnace ironmaking process

Dr Ruibing Li (exchange from Northeastern University)
Modeling and analysis of the gas-liquid flow in a new-designed reactor in the aluminium production process

Dr Hui Zhu (Joint supervision with Prof Aibing Yu)
CFD-DEM modeling and analysis of particle-fluid flows through micro channels

Dr Zhaoyang Li (Joint supervision with Prof Aibing Yu)
Development and application of CFD process model to ironmaking blast furnace

Dr He Zhang (exchange from Tsinghua University)
Experimental and numerical study of pneumatic conveying

Dr Li Ji (Joint supervision with Prof Aibing Yu and Dr. Kaiwei Chu)
CFD modeling and analysis of coal separation in hydrocyclones

Dr Maryam Ghodrat (co-supervisor)
Computational modeling and analysis of the flow and performance in hydrocyclones

Dr Ke Li (co-supervisor)
CFD-DEM simulation of particle-fluid flows

Masters

Mr Yecheng Tang (Joint-supervision with Associate/Prof Ruiping Zou)
Design of hydrocyclone

Mr Zhaoyang Li (co-supervisor)
Numerical study of geometrical effects on blast furnace (BF) flow and performance

Mr Zheng Qi (co-supervisor)
CFD modeling and analysis of the multiphase flow and performance of dense medium cyclone: effects of geometry and operating conditions

CHE4162 - Particle Technology