The NICTURB project is a collaborative research initiative between Politecnico di Milano and Università di Brescia, aimed at advancing simulation tools for industrial applications dealing with non-ideal compressible flows (NICFD). NICFD is the branch of fluid mechanics that studies non-reacting flows in non-ideal thermodynamic states, from pure dense vapor flows to two-phase near-critical flows. In the last two decades, the interest in such flows has quickly grown due to the engineering applications related to the conversion of renewable and waste energy sources, like, e.g., organic Rankine cycles, supercritical carbon dioxide cycle power plants, combustors operating with supercritical fluids, and heat-pumps.

Supported under the program PRIN promoted by the Italian Ministry of Research and University and funded by the European Union under the NextGenerationEU action, the NICTURB project involves two research units: one at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology of Politecnico di Milano led by Barbara Re and one at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering of Università di Brescia led by Gianmaria Noventa.

Turbulence modeling for NICFD flows will be advanced in two different frameworks, the high-order discontinuous Galerkin solver for the delayed extra-large eddy simulation (DX-LES) hybrid model and the open-source toolbox SU2 for the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulation. p- and h-adaptation techniques will be adopted to reduce the computational cost without compromising the accuracy of the solution, making the tools more attractive for industrial applications where efficiency is crucial.