Professor Robert Dorrell

I am Professor of Fluid Mechanics and a member of the School’s Civil Engineering Group. I seek to support a sustainable net zero transition by advancing our understanding of fluid flows: that shape our systems understanding of the world around us; and which control industrial processes.

My research expertise is is integrating theoretical, experimental, real-world and computational methods to understand the dynamics of highly-energtic, turbulent, flows. Applications include: the transport of particulate material, such as sediments and pollutants; scalar properties, such as salinity and heat; and flow-structure-interaction, from surface drag to marine infrastructure. In most of these flows, over sufficient scales, density varies and is primary, but poorly understood, control on crucial mixing processes. Recent work seeks to understand the controls of stratification on turbulence, including to better understand:

• The effects marine artificial structures developments at scale, from offshore wind to oil and gas, in stratified shelf seas, and their role as nature based solutions within future climate change
• The transport of pollutants such as nano- and micro-plastics, their fluxes with variable buouyancy and role as vectors chemicals, heavy metals and pathogens in the natural and built environment
• The mechanics of turbidity currents, to understand the risk they pose, with >95% of the worlds internet carried by seafloor cables, and their role as one of the largest carbon sinks on the planet

Current research activity

• The statistically-Unsteady, Next generation Sediment Transport model for Environmental flows (NERC Independent Research Fellow, NE/S014535/1)
• Enabling Sustainable Wind Energy Expansion in Seasonally Stratified Seas (NERC NE/X004880/1)
• Towards enabling sustainable expansion of offshore wind while protecting marine benthic biodiversity and functioning (NERC NE/X008878/1)
• Turbidites Research Group Phase 10 https://trg.leeds.ac.uk
• Center for Doctoral Training in Offshore Wind Energy Sustainability and Resilience https://auracdt.hull.ac.uk/cdt1/ (EPSRC EP/Y034732/1)
• Center for Doctoral Training in Offshore Wind Energy and the Environment https://auracdt.hull.ac.uk/cdt2/ (NERC-EPSRC EP/S023763/)

Recently completed research projects

• Future of Advanced Metrology for Environmental fluid dynamics (NERC NE/V017160/1)
• Novel High Performance Wave Energy Converters (EPSRC EP/V040561/1)
• Heterogeneous Fibre Optic sensor Arrays to Monitor Composite Manufacture (EPSRC EP/W025108/1)

• Skevington, E.W., & Dorrell, R.M. (2025). Gravity current energetics and particle suspension.Journal of Fluid Mechanics. In Press
• Lloyd, C. J., & Dorrell, R. M. (2024). Linear dynamics in turbulent stratified plane Poiseuille flow.Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 999, A104. https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2024.1000
• Reece, J.K., Dorrell, R.M., & Straub, K.M. (2024). Circulation of hydraulically ponded turbidity currents and the filling of continental slope minibasins.Nature Communications, 15(1), 2075. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46120-2
• Fukuda, S., de Vet, M.G., Skevington, E.W., Bastianon, E., Fernández, R., Wu, X., McCaffrey, W.D., Naruse, H., Parsons, D.R. & Dorrell, R.M. (2023). Inadequacy of fluvial energetics for describing gravity current autosuspension.Nature communications, 14(1), 2288. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37724-1
• Dorrell, R.M., Lloyd, C.J., Lincoln, B.J., Rippeth, T.P., Taylor, J.R., Caulfield, C.C.P., Sharples, J., Polton, J.A., Scannell, B.D., Greaves, D.M., Hall, R.A. & Simpson, J.H. (2022). Anthropogenic mixing in seasonally stratified shelf seas by offshore wind farm infrastructure.Frontiers in Marine Science, 9, 830927. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.830927
• Wells, M. G., & Dorrell, R. M. (2021). Turbulence processes within turbidity currents.Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, 53(1), 59-83. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-fluid-010719-060309

Undergraduate

• CVB101 Open Channel Flow Design and Analysis

Recently completed projects

• The Offshore Wind Library (Innovate UK ICURe)
• SmartWave (Higher Education Innovation Fund)

In 2010 I obtained my PhD from the University of Bristol in Applied Mathematics. After this I was awarded a NERC secondment at the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, working on sea level rise and the Eyjafjallajökull eruption. In 2011 I moved to a Post-doctoral Research Assistant post at the University of Southampton, researching density driven flows. In 2013 I worked as fellow on a Joint Industry Project, the Turbidites Research Group, University of Leeds. In 2017 I secured a Vice Chancellor’s Fellowship at the University of Hull, where I was awarded a National Geographic Explorer Award (2018) and was co-lead on a Royal Society Apex Award (2019). In 2019 I was awarded a prestigious NERC Independent Research Fellowship to develop new tools to study particle transport processes in turbulent flows.

At the University of Hull, I established a multi-disciplinary Fluid Dynamics Group, bringing together (chemical, civil and mechanical) Engineering, Earth Sciences, Geography, Mathematics and Physics. I took up a position as Reader in Environmental Fluid Dynamics in 2021, before becoming Professor of Fluid Mechanics in 2023. At Hull I also served as postgraduate research director, and later interim co-director, of the Energy Environment Institute. I led the development, and have acted as Director, on two EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training in offshore wind energy (2019 and 2024).

I have acted as a reviewer, associate editor, and panel member for numerous journals and international research councils. Further, I also serve on advisory boards, including for the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, Scottish Government Marine Directorate and, as chair, for the EPSRC CDT in Future Fluids.

Professional affiliations

• American Geophysical Union
• Japanese Geophysical Union
• Royal Geographical Society