This SIG is focused on phenomena and physics of acoustic waves interacting with liquid (either in droplet form or in micro-channels), and on engineering and applications of acoustofluidics in diagnostic systems, biotechnology and biomedicine. It includes topics of microfluidics induced by ultrasonic, surface acoustic waves, bulk acoustic waves and flexural waves, and the use of these for bio-sampling, microanalysis, and microfluidic diagnosis.
Leader: Richard Fu (Northumbria University)
The study of biologically active fluids is a fascinating and practically important new field of fluid mechanics. Leading UK researchers from different disciplines are working in this area. This SIG proposes to bring these researchers together to share knowledge, collaborate and bid for funding to solve the field’s grand challenges.
Leader: David Smith (University of Birmingham)
The SIG creates critical mass to ensure the UK remains a leading international centre for work in rotating flows and their industrial application. It brings together engineers and mathematicians to coordinate complementary analytical, simulation and experimental approaches. A particular aim is for the academic community to engage with industrial problems.
Leader: Zahir Hussain (University of Leicester)
Computational modelling of blood flow can help study and understand cardiovascular responses in health, disease and intervention. The proposed SIG seeks an integration of three different areas: 1D flow models for vascular networks; 3D image-based arterial/cardiac flow models; and blood flow models through medical devices and following interventions.
Leader: Raoul van Loon (Swansea University)
Combustion has immense socio-economic relevance, with conflicting demands on energy generation and environmental pollution. These demands can only be met by the improvement of technologies, and combustion science plays a central role in this endeavour. This SIG aims to bring world-leading UK groups together to identify topics for collective explorations.
Leader: Salvador Navarro-Martinez (Imperial College London)
Computational fluid dynamics, including relativistic hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics, applied to diverse astrophysical phenomena.
Leader: László Könözsy (Cranfield University)
Use of data-driven and machine learning tools for fluid flow analysis.
Leader: Luca Magri (University of Cambridge)
This SIG aims at establishing a network around the topic of Drop Dynamics. The objective is to bring together experimentalists, theoreticians and numerical-modellers working on, but not limited to: pinch-off, drop formation/generation, coalescence, drop interactions, drop impact, spreading, splashing and applications (inkjet, sprays, microfluidics, drug delivery, etc.).
Leader: Alfonso Castrejón-Pita (University of Oxford)
This multidisciplinary SIG provides a fluids‐materials interfaces forum for scientists and engineers seeking to understand the interaction of liquids with bio‐inspired fluid boundaries involving texture (e.g. ribbed, super-hydrophobic, liquid-impregnated). It includes both droplets moving across surfaces and flow adjacent to surfaces at different length scales and Reynolds numbers.
Leader: Glen McHale (University of Edinburgh)
The SIG specialises in fluid flow transition and control: hydrodynamic stability, coherent structures and nonlinear dynamics, modelling, simulation, experiments and development of novel flow control strategies. The SIG aims at facilitating communication and collaboration for emerging challenges, training of next-generation researchers, and an increased international visibility of the UK’s research activities in this area. The SIG members consist of leading figures in established (flow instability) and emerging areas (dynamical systems, flow control, optimisation) from both academia and industry (Airbus, Rolls-Royce & Mclaren), and their expertise covers all the technical aspects (theory, computation and experiments). The scope of the SIG is: 1) to improve communication across boundaries between traditional and emerging areas; 2) to foster the next generation of academics and industrial researchers at the subject interface; 3) to collectively correspond to research council funding initiatives; 4) to increase the international visibility of the UK’s research activities in the areas of the SIG.
Leader: George Papadakis (Imperial College London)
We seek to understand, predict and eventually control the patterns that emerge in porous and granular materials by fluid flow. Examples include the creation of flow-induced preferential conduits (fingers or channels) by hydrodynamic instabilities, fracturing, dissolution and deposition of solutes and particles. The acquired knowledge would be applied to a range of applications, ranging from 3-D printing, coating, microfluidics, and filtering to water resources, carbon geo-sequestration, sediment erosion and enhanced energy recovery.
Leader: Ran Holtzman (Coventry University)
Cleaning and decontamination operations constitute complex multiphase flow problems. Applications range from domestic and industrial cleaning to removal of hazardous chemical, biological, radioactive or nuclear materials. This SIG will forge a cross-disciplinary community spanning theoretical and experimental researchers, practitioners and government agencies to develop comprehensive approaches to optimizing these processes.
Leader: Ian Wilson (University of Cambridge)
Granular materials form a distinct and fascinating state in physics, not characterizable by simple fluid or solid mechanics. Following the strongly multidisciplinary nature of this field, this targeted SIG brings together UK scientists from engineering, geosciences and mathematics, working on granular flows in a variety of environmental and industrial applications.
Leader: Nathalie Vriend (University of Cambridge)
This SIG will be focused on the aerodynamics of road and rail vehicles, and in particular on the fundamental nature of the flows around such vehicles and their measurement and calculation using a range of experimental and computational techniques.
Leader: Andrew Garmory (Loughborough University)
To provide an active network for UK high-speed aerodynamics researchers with experimental facilities to (1) re-establish the UK’s world-leading reputation in this area, (2) showcase the capabilities of SIG members to UK industry, (3) identify funding opportunities to support collaborative research, and (4) promote best practice for high-speed experimental aerodynamicists.
Leader: Paul Bruce (Imperial College London)
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in supersonic and hypersonic flow regimes.
Leader: Jian Fang (Daresbury Laboratory (STFC))
Free-surface flows driven by gravity and bounded by channel boundaries, including prismatic, compound and natural channels.
Leader: Vladimir Nikora (University of Aberdeen)
This SIG brings together researchers to advance the state-of-the-art in the Lattice-Boltzmann Method. It covers all aspects of theory and applications, including theoretical foundations, new algorithmic procedures, applications to a wide variety of domains and software development and optimisation for CPU/GPU.
Leader: Alessandro De Rosis (University of Manchester)
The Low-energy Ventilation SIG (LEVSIG) will bridge the knowledge-gap between optimal strategies for building ventilation and current industry practice. The SIG will apply fundamental fluids mechanics and lead research to simultaneously address energy consumption and occupancy experience (thermal comfort, indoor air-quality), unifying two distinct research themes in building physics.
Leader: Cath Noakes (University of Leeds)
The aim of the Marine Hydrodynamics SIG would be to bring together leading academics to share current research activities and generate new collaborative research proposals focused around the unsteady fluid dynamics challenges associated with naval architecture, offshore structures and marine renewable energy.
Leader: Joseph Banks (University of Southampton)
This Special Interest Group develops and promotes new mathematical approaches and techniques to model nonlinear phenomena in waves and interfacial dynamics. Our strong interdisciplinary expertise offers a unique opportunity to create a UK group of excellence in research on nonlinear waves and interfacial phenomena, from microscopic to macroscopic scales.
Leader: Emiliano Renzi (Northumbria University)
Loss of eyesight is one of the most feared health conditions, with around 3% of the UK population living with it. There is a growing body of research by an increasing number of groups worldwide on the development of mathematical models describing the normal and pathological functioning of the eye. The aim of our research is to improve the diagnosis and prognosis for serious conditions using mathematical modelling, which can, relatively inexpensively, test the plausibility of hypothetical mechanisms and treatments.
Leader: Jennifer Tweedy (University of Bath)
Leader: Peter Stewart (University of Glasgow)
In multi-scale fluid dynamics the molecular nature of matter determines the overall flow behaviour. This SIG brings together 39 researchers from 20 institutions in a sequence of focussed meetings across the UK to roadmap future research and engage industrial partners in this scientific grand challenge for the 21st century.
Leader: Duncan Lockerby (University of Warwick)
The SIG will identify, and target ‘grand challenges’, with a common theme of multi-scale interactions, in geophysical fluid dynamics. The outcomes will be research project plans and proposals focused on understanding and developing parametrisations for forecast and climate models, as well as introductory material (e.g. recorded talks) for students.
Leader: Gavin Esler (University College London)
This SIG will cover research activities related to algorithms, software, tools, data management and applications to tackle turbulent flows (single and multiphase) exploiting modern high performance computing platforms ranging from multi-core/many-core architectures to accelerators to graphics processing units.
Leader: Sylvain Laizet (Imperial College London)
This SIG concerns all aspects of multiphase flows and related transport phenomena encompassing methodologies (experimental, theoretical and computational) and scales (from contact lines to large interfacial waves). The grouping brings together experts from academia and industry to strengthen and sustain the internationally-leading UK multiphase research community, spanning disciplines and applications.
Leader: Prashant Valluri (University of Edinburgh)
The vast range of scales in many fluid problems translates into significant computational cost in computer simulations. Rapidly evolving hardware in high-performance computing poses challenges for developers of numerical methods. This SIG will explore novel computational strategies to improve efficiency of transient flow simulations on current and future supercomputers.
Leader: Jemma Shipton (University of Exeter)
Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics (NNFM) concerns the study of the flow of rheologically complex fluids. NNFM is, by its nature, rather broad and here we propose to restrict the SIG to three key themes: yield stress (viscoplastic) fluids; purely-elastic instabilities; and a third area to be selected by the group.
Leader: Rob Poole (University of Liverpool)
Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) is the study of fundamental fluid flow using molecular simulation - 'non-equilibrium' because the system is driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium by wall motion, temperature and pressure gradients or contains an interface, e.g. a liquid-vapour coexistence.
Leader: Edward Smith (Brunel University London)
This is an area of research initiated in the UK over the past 10 years and which is now developing rapidly internationally. This SIG will help sustain our lead, accelerate understanding of non-equilibrium turbulence in various settings, and promote the development of predictive modelling tools that take into account non-equilibrium physics.
Leader: Chris Keylock (Loughborough University)
This SIG aims to bring together academics and industrialists to critically examine progress in research and development in nuclear thermal hydraulics, identify challenges and urgent research needs to underpin the activities of the nuclear industry and foster the development of collaborative research and advanced training for early career researchers.
Leader: Shuisheng He (University of Sheffield)
Numerical optimisation is a major area of development in CFD with proven benefits. Widespread application is limited by the considerable computational cost, as well as the lack of integration of parametrisation, surrogate models and gradient-based methods. The consortium comprises over 20 members from the major UK research groups, as well as commercial code developers and industrial end users.
Leader: Jens-Dominik Mueller (Queen Mary University of London)
Ocean turbulence lies at the heart of understanding the climate system on regional to global scales, and over time scales ranging from minutes to hundreds of thousands of years. The processes involved take up spatial scales of thousands of kilometres (basin scale) to centimetres or less (small-scale mixing). Despite such a large spatio-temporal breadth of scales, the turbulence spectrum is energised at all scales, implying a tight connectivity between oceanic phenomena on small and large scales, and on short and long scales. The SIG aims to take an inter-disciplinary approach to understanding ocean turbulence, using theoretical, experimental, computational and observational tools.
Leader: Adrien Lefauve (University of Cambridge)
Leader: Ali Mashayek (Imperial College London)
The group's focus is particulate matter filtration flows, in after-treatment and other systems. With rapidly tightening emissions regulations for land and sea transport, this research area urgently needs a boost, which will be facilitated by bringing together industry and academia, as well as traditionally separated marine and automotive research communities.
Leader: Svetlana Aleksandrova (University of Leicester)
The group will identify grand challenges focusing on non-equilibrium dynamical properties of quantised vortices and other topological excitations in superfluids across a range of quantum systems. The outcomes will be collaborative research proposals as well as a collection of entry-level material for students entering the field.
Leader: Hayder Salman (University of East Anglia)
This SIG brings together researchers from across the UK that use or are interested in applying meshless methods to their fluid dynamics (or related) problems, with a particular emphasis on smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). Domains covered by this SIG are varied, ranging from all aspects of engineering through to astrophysics.
Leader: Steven Lind (Cardiff University)
This SIG will bring together researchers who use theoretical, numerical, laboratory, and field-based approaches to investigate surface and internal waves in a variety of fluid environments with the goal of synthesizing knowledge across disciplines to advance our understanding of such waves and feedback mechanisms between surface and internal waves.
Leader: Andrew Lawrie (University of Bristol)
This multidisciplinary SIG focuses on the turbulent aspect of heat transfer in single-phase or multi-phase flows. The objective is to bring together UK's experimental, theoretical and CFD experts in thermal engineering science aimed at tackling the challenges that prevent improving sustainability and energy efficiency in renewable as well as conventional energy systems.
Leader: Yasser Mahmoudi (University of Manchester)
The SIG focuses on emerging turbulent skin-friction reduction techniques, including passive and active methods of surface modification, hydrophobic/super-hydrophobic surfaces and polymer and surfactant additives. Special attention will be paid to the question of practical feasibility of the techniques as well as drag-reduction mechanisms, aiming at achieving synergy between various approaches.
Leader: Kwing-So Choi (University of Nottingham)
This SIG aims to facilitate the adoption of Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) techniques for theoretical, numerical and experimental fluid mechanics problems.
Leader: Saleh Rezaeiravesh (University of Manchester)
The Urban Fluid Mechanics SIG focuses on atmospheric flows over rough surfaces, urban flows, dispersion of gas and PMs in neutral and non-neutral stratifications, air quality and relevant wind engineering problems. The scope ranges from fundamental to applied research, with an emphasis on experimental, numerical and theoretical approaches.
Leader: Maarten Reeuwijk (Imperial College London)
NWTF provides access to world-class wind tunnel facilities in a cost-effective way. Each facility operates as open access for some of the available tunnel time with plans to extend, through an ARCHER-like process, to free access for students who are appropriately funded. The Users’ Forum would help to set up such a process as well as providing feedback to NWTF on matters such as usage, type and number of facilities.
Leader: Kwing-So Choi (University of Nottingham)
The Wave Turbulence SIG will focus on the development of wave turbulence theory, a non-equilibrium statistical mechanics description of weakly interacting dispersive waves to strong nonlinearities and applications to industrial related fluid dynamics. Topics range from acoustics, water waves, nonlinear optics, quantum fluids, plasmas, and geophysical turbulence.
Leader: Jason Laurie (Aston University)
The aim of the SIG in Wave-Structure Interaction (SIG-WSI) is to bring together and widen the community of researchers and developers around wave structure interaction (WSI). It will join the CCP-WSI Network with the shared objective of providing a focus for numerical modelling, software development and laboratory experimentation in applications relating to offshore renewable energy, coastal and ocean engineering, including building a national Numerical Wave Tank (NWT) facility. The SIG will participate in the CCP-WSI programme of workshops and training courses, extending the reach of these activities.
Leader: Deborah Greaves (University of Plymouth)
This SIG supports the engagement, retention and progression of women in the fluid dynamics discipline in academia and industry. There is currently a substantial underrepresentation of women in fluid dynamics at all career stages, and this SIG will provide a space to network, raise the profile of women across the breadth of fluid dynamics, support career development, be a voice for the community and to funders, and ultimately be a platform to enhance wider aspects of diversity in fluid dynamics. The SIG is open to all who have an interest in furthering the development of women in fluids, and currently there are over 100 members.
Leader: Claire Savy (University of Leeds)