Experts

Peter Ireland holds the Donald Schultz Chair in Turbomachinery and is Head of the Oxford Thermofluids Institute. He has dedicated his career to researching the technologies used to cool systems for aircraft propulsion and power generation and now leads a broad portfolio of research programmes ranging from turbine cooling to hypersonic flow. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the UK Corporate Specialist in Heat Transfer at Rolls-Royce where he held the senior heat transfer specialist role for projects involving turbines, fuel cells, nuclear power, fire modelling, manufacture, instrumentation, heat exchangers, power electronic cooling and combustion.

Dr Bruce leads a research group in experimental high speed aerodynamics at Imperial, utilising Imperial’s supersonic and hypersonic wind tunnels. His research focuses on how air interacts with objects travelling at high speed, including understanding the shock waves which form on high speed planes and designing atmospheric re-entry vehicles for future space exploration missions. Dr Bruce joined Imperial in 2011 and currently teaches undergraduate courses in aircraft aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics for re-entry vehicles.

Dr David Soper is a Lecturer in Vehicle Aerodynamics in the School of Engineering and Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education. His research interests lie in the field of applied fluid dynamics and engineering applications through vehicle aerodynamics. He has particular expertise in experimental investigations both at model and full scale. He is the facility manager and operator of the University of Birmingham moving model TRansient Aerodynamic INvestigation (TRAIN) rig for vehicle aerodynamic research.

Dr Birch is the head of the Centre for Aerodynamics & Environmental Flow, Director of Research at Surrey Sensors Ltd and Programme Leader for aerospace engineering. Dr Birch has more than fifteen years of experience in experimental aerodynamics research, specializing in the characterization of highly vortical, unsteady turbulent flows and the development of specialist instrumentation required for this work.

Research interests are centred on particle deposition in turbomachinery and high-speed aerothermodynamics. His research groups in these fields work on a wide spectrum of fundamental to applied areas, working closely with industry to ensure the immediate exploitation and impact of research. He has developed three large scale hypersonic wind tunnels, forming the high-speed capability of the UK’s NWTF (High Density, T6 Stalker and the Low Density tunnel).

Professor of Experimental Fluid Mechanics in the Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics Research Group at the University of Southampton. He has an extensive track record of devising advanced experimental methods and utilizing them to develop fundamental understanding of aerodynamic and turbulent flows. His research is funded by EPSRC, EU-FP7, Royal Society and the US Air Force. He has an outstanding publication and citation record (h-index=11) and has published in the field’s top journals including Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physics of Fluids & Experiments in Fluids.

PhD in high-speed aerodynamics, Cambridge University, now Professor of Experimental Fluid Mechanics and head of Aerodynamics Research Group. She is interested in flow physics of complex fluid phenomenon using optical techniques. The focus of current work is flow control for low and high-speed flows, for improved aerodynamic performance and fuel efficiency of turbomachinery and air/land vehicles

Research interests: Jet Noise Applications and Computational Aeroacoustics, Gas Turbine Installation Aerodynamics, Turbomachinery, CFD Code Development, Next Generation CFD, High Performance Computing

Senior lecturer in the Aerospace Sciences Division. He has performed testing in water tanks and wind tunnels in the UK and internationally, to study the fluid mechanics of unsteady, separated flows relevant to wind and tidal turbines, rotorcraft and propeller propulsion. As part of NWTF, he led the refurbishment of the deHavilland wind tunnel now used for EU and EPSRC funded projects.

Graduated from University of Sheffield with a MEng(Hons) in Mechanical Engineering in 1995 before graduating from the MSc Aerodynamics course at Cranfield University the year later. Completed a PhD in high speed aerodynamics at Cranfield while working for the Defence Research Agency, where Simon worked on experimental and CFD projects ranging from missile, civil and combat aircraft aerodynamics and propulsion integration. Was at City University of London from 2004-2014, completing a MA in Academic Practice in 2010. Simon helped establish and was seconded to the UK Aerospace Technology Institute until 2017. He is secretary of the Association of Aerospace Universities, a member of the ESDU Transonics committee and the UK Vertical Lift Network.

Lecturer with expertise in experimental aero-fluid dynamics and a keen interest in the study of separated flows, separation control mechanisms, the use of thermal anemometry and laser-based flow diagnostic tools and the development of novel flow visualization techniques. He has worked on projects for Airbus Defence and Space (Zephyr program), Leonardo MW Ltd and Highways England, as part of the NWTF.

Head of Energy, Fluid Mechanics and Turbomachinery. Main research interest is in experimental high- and low-speed flows with application to aeronautics, propulsion, road vehicles and sustainable energy. Works closely with various industrial partners, e.g. Rolls Royce and has been on the management board of several international research consortia.