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Mikhail Benilov
Professor
- Departamento de Física, Faculdade de Ciências Exatas e da Engenharia, Universidade da Madeira, Funchal, Portugal
- Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
Contacts:
e-mail:
benilov@uma.pt
Tel.: +351 291 705256
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Publications
Site
Interaction of
High-Pressure Arc
Plasmas with Thermionic
Cathodes
Education and Academic Degrees
June 1968 - graduated from the physical-mathematical school in Moscow
June 1974 - graduated from Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology, with Diploma with Honours
Sep. 1977 - completed postgraduate courses at the above Institute and at the Institute for Mechanics of Lomonosov Moscow State University
Nov. 1978 - degree of Candidate of Physical-Mathematical Sciences (Ph.D.) from Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology
June 1990 - degree of Doctor of Physical-Mathematical Sciences (this is an academic degree superior to Ph.D. which is similar, e.g., to Habilitation in Germany or to Doutor Agregado in Portugal) from the High Commission for Certification of the USSR Council of Ministers
Oct. 1997 - degree of Doutor Agregado from Instituto Superior Técnico da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal)
Professional Career
1977/1990 - Institute for High Temperatures of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow:
Oct. 1977 - Senior Engineer
Jan. 1979 - Junior Scientist
Apr. 1982 - Senior Scientist
May 1989 - Leading Scientist
1990/1993 - Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany:
Nov. 1990 - Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
May 1992 - Research Scientist
1993/ - Universidade da Madeira, Portugal:
Feb. 1993 - Invited Full Professor
Nov. 2000 - Full Professor
Scientific Activity
Current research interests: plasma physics, fluid dynamics, computational physics, kinetic theory of gases, nonlinear dissipative structures.
Publications:
166
papers in refereed
journals, one review
monograph (publications).
The most important scientific result
A new class of
steady-state solutions
has been found in the
theory of DC glow
discharges and cathodes
of high-pressure arc
discharges. These
solutions exist
simultaneously with the
solution given in
textbooks, which
describes a discharge
mode with a uniform or
smooth distribution of
current over the cathode
surface, and describe
modes with different
configurations of
cathode spots: normal
spots on glow cathodes,
patterns of multiple
spots recently observed
on cathodes of glow
microdischarges, spots
on high-pressure arc
cathodes. In particular,
these solutions show
that cathode spots
represent
self-organization
phenomena and that basic
mechanisms of
near-cathode
space-charge sheath can
produce
self-organization;
another illustration of
the richness of the gas
discharge science. As
far as arc cathodes are
concerned, these
multiple solutions have
proved relevant for
industrial applications.
Research projects in the last 10 years
- Modes
of current transfer to
cathodes of
high-pressure arc
discharges and their
stability. 2005-2009. Funding: FCT, project
POCI(PPCDT)/FIS/60526/2004.
-
Cathode spots in
high-pressure DC gas
discharges:
self-organization
phenomena. 2009-2012.
Funding: FCT, project
PTDC/FIS/68609/2006.
-
Modelling,
understanding, and
controlling
self-organization
phenomena in
plasma-electrode
interaction in gas
discharges: from first
principles to
applications.
2013-2015. Funding: FCT,
project PTDC/FIS-PLA/2708/2012.
- PlasMa: teoria e simulação avançada de plasmas relevantes para aplicações energéticas. Since 2019. Funding: European Regional Development Fund through the
Operational Program of the Autonomous Region of Madeira 2014–2020, project M1420-01-0145-FEDER-000016.
- Modelling of different aspects of vacuum arc physics. 2009-2017. Funding: Siemens AG, Germany.
- Modelling of high-voltage breakdown. 2015-2018. Funding: Siemens AG, Germany.
- Modelling of arc plasma interaction with electrodes under conditions of low-voltage circuit breakers. Since 2018. Funding: Schneider Electric, France.
Invited talks in the
last 5 years
- Spots and patterns on electrodes of gas discharges, 68th Gaseous Electronics Conference/9th International Conference on Reactive Plasmas/33rd Symposium on Plasma Processing, Honolulu, HI, USA, Oct. 2015.
- New results in the theory and modelling of sheaths and near-electrode layers in arc discharges, 27th Symposium on Plasma Physics and Technology, Prague, June 2016.
- State-of-the-art in the simulation of plasma-electrode interaction in arc discharges, 14th High-Tech Plasma Processes Conference (HTPP 14), Munich, Germany, July 2016.
- Theory and modelling of plasma-electrode interaction in switching arcs, 3ème édition du Colloque sur les Arcs Electriques (CAE XIII) et le 3ème Workshop Arcs et Contacts Electriques (ACE 2017), Nancy, France, March 2017.
- The Bohm criterion and modelling of sheaths and near-electrode layers in arc discharges, Int. Conf. on Low-Temperature Plasma Physics (FNTP) 2017, Kazan', RF, June 2017.
- Recent advances in the modelling of plasma-electrode interaction and electrode erosion in high- to low-pressure to vacuum arcs, 15th High-Tech Plasma Processes Conference (HTPP 15), Toulouse, France, July 2018.
- Recent advances in simulation of plasma-electrode interaction in arc discharges, 22nd Int. Conf. on Gas Discharges and their Applications, Novi Sad, Serbia, Sept. 2018.
- Advanced simulation of arc discharges and their electrodes, 71st Annual Gaseous Electronics Conference, Portland, OR, USA, Nov. 2018.
- Understanding and modelling spots and patterns on electrodes of gas discharges, Journée thématique on cold plasma, Institut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse, Toulouse, France, June 2019.
Teaching
Activity
1980/1984 - lectured at
the Moscow Institute for
Physics and Technology.
Subject: Continuum
Mechanics.
1993/ - has lectured
at Universidade da
Madeira. Subjects:
General Physics I -
Mechanics, General
Physics II -
Thermodynamics and
Molecular Physics,
General Physics III-
Electricity and
Magnetism, General
Physics V - Optics,
Quantum Mechanics,
Continuum Mechanics, Electromagnetism, Experimental Sciences, Numerical Methods in
Physics, Plasma Physics,
Asymptotic Methods in
Physics.
Supervised 10 Ph. D.
theses.
Administrative Activities
Participated in creation of the Department of Physics of Universidade da Madeira. Was the first Chairman of the Department (1996-1998). Has continued to serve as Chairman of the Department of Physics in 2000-2008 and 2011-2016. Member of the General Council of the University of Madeira (since 2013). Chairman of the Assembly of the Faculty of Exact Sciences and Engineering of the University of Madeira (since 2013).
Scientific Societies and Service to Community
Sociedade Portuguesa de Física (member), Institute of Physics UK (Fellow). Has served on the Editorial Board of the international journal Plasma Sources Science and Technology (2004-2016) and International Scientific Committees of European Plasma Conference (HTPP) since 2012 and International Conference on Low-Temperature Plasma Physics since 2014. Has served as session organizer at the IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS) in 2012-2016.
Language Abilities
Russian (first language), Portuguese, English, German.
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