Join us on September 9th at 14:00 CEST as Ricardo Ruiz Baier, Professor and ARC Future Fellow in the School of Mathematics at Monash University, presents a webinar on the topic of "Mathematical analysis and robust numerical methods for ion transport in deformable porous media."

The interplay between mechanical deformation, fluid flow, and ionic transport lies at the heart of many processes in biology, geoscience, and engineering—from how nutrients move through soft tissues to how electrolytes behave in porous electrodes.

In this talk, Prof. Baier explores new computational methods for simulating such coupled phenomena, focusing on the interaction between poroelastic materials and electrochemical transport. Specifically, developing and analysing numerical schemes that combine the Biot model of poroelasticity with the Poisson–Nernst–Planck equations, which govern ion motion in the presence of electric fields.

This approach is based on mixed finite element methods, which offer a flexible and robust framework for approximating complex, multiphysics systems. A central contribution of this work is a mathematical analysis that ensures the well-posedness and stability of the problem, both in the continuous and discrete settings. This involves tools from modern functional analysis and the theory of saddle-point problems.

Finally, Prof. Baier will present computational examples that validate these theoretical findings and demonstrate the practical performance of the proposed methods. These results provide a solid foundation for future simulations in areas like biomedical engineering, geosciences, and energy storage.