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Thermo-Fluids & Energy Systems (TFES)
The Thermo-Fluids and Energy Systems (TFES) Research Group, led by Dr Sajad Alimohammadi, is based in the School of Mechanical Engineering at TU Dublin, Bolton Street. We combine experiments and simulation to understand heat and fluid flow, from the underlying physics to engineered systems, with a strong focus on making data centres and digital infrastructure more energy efficient.
About half of our research addresses data centre energy efficiency, from device and server to whole facility. The other half spans electronics and EV battery cooling, synthetic jets and microfluidic devices, jet impingement heat transfer, droplet evaporation and phase change, flow-driven energy harvesting, smart manufacturing and digital twins, and aeroacoustics, all built on coupled CFD and experiments.
We work closely with Trinity College Dublin, Purdue University's Cooling Technologies Research Center, University College Dublin, University College Cork and University of Galway, and with industry partners across Europe, from data centre operators and hardware manufacturers to AI developers. News, publications and full team profiles are on our group website, www.thermo-fluidsgroup.com.
TFES at a glance
- Ireland's only Cyber Physical Server Benchmarking Platform, measuring the energy use of server and AI hardware
- Over EUR 1.5 million in competitive funding, including TU Dublin's only Eurostars project
- More than 40 peer-reviewed publications since 2017, including Applied Thermal Engineering, the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, THERMINIC and ITherm
- A team of three postdoctoral researchers and six PhD researchers, with four PhD and two postdoctoral completions to date
- Harvey Rosten Award for Excellence (2020), TU Dublin Early Career Researcher Award (2023) and the first TU Dublin researcher elected to Young Academy Ireland (2026)
- Guest Editor of a 2026 special issue of Energy on the energy and environmental impacts of cloud computing and data centres
- Guest Editor of a 2026 special issue of Energy on the energy and environmental impacts of cloud computing and data centres