Researcher Mobility: Cameron Wallace, Loughborough University

Researcher mobility is a key initiative of the NWTF, encouraging researchers to travel from their host institution to carry out an experiment at an NWTF to enhance their research.

In July 2024, Cameron Wallace, a doctoral researcher at Loughborough University travelled to the University of Southampton to carry out testing at the RJ Mitchell tunnel.

Cameron is a EPSRC / JLR funded iCASE doctoral researcher, focused on underbody aerodynamics of battery electric vehicles. His work uses a combination of computational simulation tools (CFD) and experimental methods (wind tunnel, pressure tappings and PIV) to characterise flow features in the underbody region. In this region, ‘boundary conditions’ are crucial, due to the proximity of the ground and therefore understanding how flow behaviour changes when these are matched to reality – where the vehicle moves relative to the ground – is an important consideration.

Both the 7 x 5 and RJ Mitchell facilities at University of Southampton feature a ‘moving ground plane’ – this allows the same measurements to be performed at Loughborough University whilst isolating and understanding the impact of the moving ground.

Project supervisor, Dr Dan Butcher, Lecturer, Loughborough University: ‘The researcher mobility scheme has enabled this work as it would otherwise be impractical and very costly to make these changes in our facility. We hope to publish our findings which help validate Cameron’s CFD simulations and to develop our collaboration between Loughborough University and University of Southampton.’

The NWTF is open to all UK based researchers. To access NWTF facilities, contact [email protected].