How can we improve upon existing methods for modelling turbulent flows?

The difficulty for engineers is the lack of a fundamental understanding of the behaviour of the underlying equations in all but the simplest configurations. Hence, they pursue their work without recourse to a fundamental physical understanding.

To improve the existing tools used for predicting flow behaviour, more detailed knowledge is required, particularly concerning how flows behave at small scales near boundaries.

Chris’ lecture will discuss an approach that provides a promising way forward. He will demonstrate how to recast conventional approaches, highlighting important aspects of the flow dynamics that are hidden when using standard methods. Making such behaviour explicit will enhance our ability to model dynamics in more effective ways.

After completing his undergraduate degree in the UK and MSc in Canada, Chris joined the Icelandic Meteorological Office for eight months, working on snow avalanche risk analysis and assessment. He returned to the UK, in 1997, to complete his PhD in experimental and numerical studies of turbulence and sediment transport.

Since then, he has worked on a variety of problems within cold regions and water engineering, ecology and various subdisciplines in the geosciences. Within the field of fluid mechanics and nonlinear physics, he has developed generic methods applicable across a range of sectors. For example, his synthetic data techniques have been adopted in neuroscience, finance and medicine as well as engineering and environmental science.

In recent years, his fluid mechanics research has primarily focused on understanding flow at small scales. This is crucial for understanding the physics of fluid flow as well as for practical engineering model development – because small-scale behaviour cannot be represented explicitly and must be parameterised effectively when trying to study a variety of engineering phenomena.