Experts

Dr Kevin Gouder leads a team of researchers and engineers at the 10’×5’ wind tunnel, the flagship of the National Wind Tunnel Facility initiative (www.nwtf.ac.uk). The team enables and conducts research, and provides wind tunnel services to the aeronautical and civil wind engineering sectors. Dr Gouder’s team provide wind tunnel consultancy services to the civil wind engineering sector, exploiting the long development fetch length of the 10’×5’ tunnel. The team works alongside wind engineering consultants, providing them with simulated atmospheric boundary layers at scale, and with measurements in wind environment, pedestrian safety and comfort, building cladding wind loads, building wind loads, wake assessments of proposed structures and their effect on nearby airfields and helipads, and studies in the outer flow-inner flow interactions around civil structures. Through collaboration with other researchers (Morrison and Santer) in the Department, Dr Gouder’s team and the 10’×5’ wind tunnel are enabling post-doctoral research in more efficient effusion film cooling for gas turbine blades (with Dr Jeremy Basley) supported by Rolls Royce, and post-doctoral research in the development of surface wave technologies for friction drag reduction (with Dr Zahra Soltani and Dr Isabella Fumarola) supported by Airbus. Dr Gouder, Prof Graham and an MEng student are conducting research on the distortion effects of wind turbine rotors on the oncoming, upstream turbulence. Dr Gouder is leading the Department’s participation in the recently announced Common Research Model in High Lift configuration (CRM-HL) project led by QinetiQ and Boeing. The 10’×5’ tunnel will be the first facility to receive the CRM-HL half span model in Q3 2021, and, guided by Dr Gouder, would provide the first open-access data set of measurements on the CRM-HL, funded by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI).

Professor Jonathan Morrison holds the chair of Experimental Fluid Mechanics in the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College. He received his and PhD from the University of Durham and became a member of faculty at Imperial College in 1991. His recent work has focussed fundamentals of wall turbulence including coherent structures and their relation to changes in imposed length-scale, energy transfer and pressure fluctuations. Novel approaches to flow control involve Electro-Active Polymers (EAP) both as actuators (GR/S20994, PI), and as surface-pressure sensors (EP/C535847, PI), including ink-jet printing techniques (EP/F004435, PI). Travelling surface waves for drag reduction are being developed with support from Airbus, QinetiQ and EADS-IW. Novel algorithms have been formulated (EP/E017304, CI) for real-time feedback control using wall-based sensing and actuation. High-frequency pulsed jets are being used for the control of separated flows with support from Ferrari S.p.A., EPSRC (EP/I005684, PI) and Imperial Innovations. Recent work involves fundamental studies of the effects of large roughness on turbulent channel flow (EP/D037166, PI) and turbulent boundary layers (EP/I037938, PI) and instabilities as part of the LFC-UK Programme Grant (EP/ I037946, CI). Previously, he has been Visiting Fellow at MAE, Princeton University. In 2006, he chaired the Scientific Committee for the IUTAM Symposium, Flow Control and MEMS in 2006. He is currently a member of the Aircraft of the Future Specialist Advisory Group of the ATI. He is Director of and chairs the Management Board of the National Wind Tunnel Facility, http://www.nwtf.ac.uk/html/index.html, funded by EPSRC and the ATI. He led an exhibit at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, 2014 "Smart Wing Design: Science Imitating Nature".