Seamus O’Shaughnessy Assistant Professor

I am a Mechanical Engineer with over 15 years research experience in the field of fluid mechanics and heat transfer. I graduated with first class honours from the Dept. of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering in Trinity College Dublin in 2006 before pursuing a PhD, during which I studied a form of natural convection termed thermocapillary or Marangoni convection. I regularly use a combination of analytical, numerical, experimental, and computational techniques to validate my research findings, and my research has been published in many highly respected peer-reviewed journals.

In 2010 I was appointed to the role of Research Fellow in TCD, and since then I have been working on a variety of research projects, many of which involve collaborations with industry partners on interdisciplinary topics, such as an investigation of novel methods of cooling biomedical grade polymers during machining processes. In September 2016 I began my role as Ussher Assistant Professor in Energy & Sustainable International Development.

My research is increasingly multidisciplinary in nature, incorporating aspects from other fields of engineering, physics, chemistry, material science, sociology, and medicine. A key focus of my research is the sustainable thermal management of electronics through single and multiphase heat transfer. Novel approaches are required to tackle the biggest challenges facing the electronics industry: higher power densities which require increased cooling rates in smaller spaces, preferably by minimising or eliminating cooling electrical power consumption.

Selected Current Research projects

• Novel 2-phase battery thermal management methods for application in electric vehicles
• Additive manufacturing of bespoke surfaces for improved dropwise condensation heat transfer for application in all condensers
• Using liquid flow pulsations to improve heat transfer in confined spaces for application in electronics cooling
• Designing, building, testing, prototyping of a mechanical ventilation heat recovery (MVHR) unit for domestic households