Esteban Ferrer Vaccarezza

Dr. Esteban Ferrer Vaccarezza serves as a full Professor (Catedrático) in Applied Mathematics at the School of Aeronautics (ETSIAE-UPM) of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, where he leads the FerrerCFD research group within the Department of Mathematics Applied to Aerospace Engineering and the Center for Research in Computational Simulation (CCS).

Education and Professional Background:

• Doctorate in Engineering from the University of Oxford, specializing in high-order numerical methods development
• Pre-PhD industry experience: Six years as research scientist/consultant at CENER (Spain's National Renewable Energy Centre) in the UK and Spain

Research Focus: Dr. Ferrer pioneers high-order (order ≥ 3) Computational Fluid Dynamics solvers using Spectral and Discontinuous Galerkin methods. His work minimizes numerical dispersion/diffusion errors through mesh refinement (h-refinement) and polynomial enrichment (p-refinement), achieving exponential convergence for smooth solutions. Key application domains include aerodynamics, aeroacoustics, turbulence modeling, and machine learning integration for wind/tidal turbine optimization.

Current Research Impact: The FerrerCFD group develops industry-relevant computational tools for complex aeronautical flows (e.g., airfoil simulations at high angles of attack) and renewable energy systems (horizontal-axis/Darrieus turbines). Their unique sliding mesh capability enables high-fidelity rotating body simulations, validated through Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) for bluff body flows and turbine wake interactions.

Research Infrastructure: The group maintains active industry partnerships to translate mathematical innovations into practical engineering solutions, with demonstrated capabilities in 3D unstructured parallel solvers, Fourier-series-extended flow modeling, and multi-phase fluid dynamics simulations for cross-flow turbines.