Research

 Current research

Receptivity, stability and transition of flows :
 Performance loss due to laminar boundary/shear layer transition at moderate to low Reynolds Number
— Unmanned and Micro Aerial Systems (UAS & MAS)
— Rotors and fan blades, also for small electric propulsion systems
 Effect of freestream and upstream turbulent perturbations on the stability and transition of boundary layers.
 Laminar separation bubbles

Bio-inspired fluid mechanics :
 Further studies on the aerodynamics of a Peregrine Falcon in stoop
 Bluff body optimisation inspired by boxfishes

Other activities :
 Flow control
— for loads and vibration control, low and high speed buffet
— for skin friction and induced drag reduction
 Engine intake optimisation, effect of unsteady flow

 Previous research

 Aerodynamics of a Peregrine Falcon in a high speed stoop or dive

Surface oil flow visualisation (left) showing that the flow over the bird is vortex dominated, a very good agreement is seen with the results from high fidelity LES simulations (right). The work was conducted at the Handley Page Lab at City, University of London and the contribution of C. Jagadeesh, E. Talboys, C. Lagemann and C. Brücker is kindly acknowledged. This study has been reported in an article published in Nature, Communications Biology (click here to access full article) and the image has been reproduced under the courtesy of Creative Common licencing policy.

 Stability of Tollmien-Schlichting waves

— Effect of surface non-uniformity

 Receptivity due to surface vibration

Phase angle contours to show the development of a Tollmien-Schlichting wave excited by a thin surface vibrating at a displacement amplitude less than 30 µm.