EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Fluid Dynamics across Scales

Role: Co-I Value: £4,283,614

Our goal is to create a world-class Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in fluid dynamics. The CDT will be a partnership between the Departments of Aeronautics, Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Science and Engineering, Mathematics, and Mechanical Engineering. The CDT’s uniqueness stems from training students in a broad, cross-disciplinary range of areas, supporting three key pillars where Imperial is leading internationally and in the UK: aerodynamics, micro-flows, and fluid-surface interactions, with emphasis on multi-scale physics and on connections among them, allowing the students to understand the commonalities underlying disparate phenomena and to exploit them in their research on emerging and novel technologies. The CDT’s training will integrate theoretical, experimental and computational approaches as well as mathematical and modelling skills and will engage with a wide range of industrial partners who will contribute to the training, the research and the outreach. A central aspect of the training will focus on the different phenomena and techniques across scales and their inter-relations.

Aerodynamics and fluid dynamics are CDT priority areas classified as “Maintain” in the Shaping Capabilities landscape. They are of key importance to the UK economy (see ‘Impact Summary in the Je-S form’) and there currently is a high demand for, but a real dearth of, doctoral-level researchers with sufficient fundamental understanding of the multi-scale nature of fluid flows, and with numerical, experimental, and professional skills that can immediately be used within various industrial settings. Our CDT will address these urgent training needs through a broad exposure to the multi-faceted nature of the aerodynamics and fluid mechanics disciplines; formal training in research methodology; close interaction with industry; training in transferable skills; a tight management structure (with an external advisory board, and quality-assurance procedures based on a monitoring framework and performance indicators); and public engagement activities.

The proposed CDT aligns perfectly with Imperial’s research strategy and vision and has its full support. The CDT will leverage the research excellence of the 60 participating academics across Imperial, demonstrated by a high proportion of internationally-leading researchers (among whom are 15 FREng, and, 4 FRS), 5*-rated (RAE) departments, and a fluid dynamics research income of 93M pounds sinde 2008 (with about 32% from industry) including a number of EPSRC-funded Programme Grants in fluid dynamics (less than 4 or 5 in the UK) and a number of ERC Advanced Investigator Grants in fluid dynamics (less than about 7 across Europe). The CDT will also leverage our existing world-class training infra-structure, featuring numerous pre-doctoral training programmes, high-performance computing and laboratory facilities, fluid dynamic-specific seminar series, and our outstanding track-record in training doctoral students and in graduate employability. The Faculty of Engineering has also committed to the development of bespoke dedicated space which is important for cohort-building activities, and the establishment of a fluids network to strengthen inter-departmental collaborations for the benefit of the CDT.