Water Engineering and Development Centre

The properties of non-equilibrium turbulence


WEDC staff involved: Chris Keylock

Funded by: Royal Academy of Engineering; Leverhulme Trust; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; EPSRC


Summary of project activities

The Loughborough group are heavily involved in research in to the properties of non-equilibrium turbulence. With the Aeronautics Department at Imperial College London, we co-lead the EPSRC U.K. Fluids Network special interest group on research in this field.

This work is ultimately concerned with how a turbulent flow dissipates energy and, thus, how we can develop effective models for complex flow dynamics of use for engineering applications.


Above: A fractal fence in a wind tunnel. How the flow dissipates around the fence influences snow deposition and, thus, the effective design of snow fences for protecting highways.


Summary of project outcomes and impact

  • So far, our work in this area has resulted in an international meeting we co-organized in 2014 from which we edited a special issue of Fluid Dynamics Research in 2016 with the title: Interscale Transfers and Flow Topology in Equilibrium and Non-Equilibrium Turbulence. This meeting was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
  • For the 2016-17 academic year, we were awarded a Senior Research Fellowship by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Leverhulme Trust to work in this area at Johns Hopkins University and Imperial College.
  • In 2019 we have received funding from JSPS to work on this topic with Susumu Goto at the University of Osaka.

Find out more > Website for the non-equilibrium turbulence research group