Dr James Hilton is a Postdoctoral Fellow with CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences.

Dr James Hilton: understanding granular flow for mineral processing

Dr James Hilton uses computational fluid dynamics to understand important processes in the mining and minerals industries.

• 7 March 2008 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications 

Current activities

Dr Hilton is a Postdoctoral Fellow with CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences in the Computational Fluid Dynamics group.

Dr Hilton's research focuses on the modelling of industrial granular flows for mining and mineral processing.  

He is studying granular flow and aims to create a way to link large and small scale simulations together to allow complex large scale granular flows to be investigated.

He is currently working on a project to help improve the energy efficiency and processing capabilities of rock grinding mills.

The collaborative project is funded through the Centre for Sustainable Resource Processing and involves researchers from:

• CSIRO
• the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC)
• the University of Cape Town.

The project involves modelling at a micro-level by building a virtual comminution machine (VCM).

Researchers will be able to better understand what happens inside a mill, with the aim of improving energy use, processing outputs and future mill design.

Background

Dr Hilton joined CSIRO in 2007 as a Postdoctoral Fellow.

Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral researcher working in the Complex Systems group in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

His research at Trinity College was on computation fluid dynamic simulations, focused on:

• surface dynamics
• rheology of non-Newtonian fluids
• granular media.

Academic qualifications

Dr Hilton has been awarded a:

• Master in Science in Physics, from Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, in 2001.
• Doctor of Philosophy in Computational Physics, from the Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, in 2005.

Read more about In-depth insight to improve mill design.