King, Miljkovic to lead new MURI-funded research

King and Miljkovic are co-principal investigators on the project titled “Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Phase Change Heat Transfer” led by the University of California, Irvine. Heat flows that result from phase changes such as boiling to vapor condensation are crucial to modern building systems, transportation, refrigeration and power generation. However, the physics of these processes remains incredibly difficult to model and simulate because these processes are fundamentally chaotic and involve multiple physical processes. Researchers will use state-of-the-art computer vision and physics-based machine learning techniques to interpret and predict phase changes in system designs.  

The Illinois team led by King and Miljkovic will collect high-resolution vision information of phase changes and use it to train machine learning models. The team will then use these models to design better-performing phase change heat transfer systems.