PhD in Closely Related Discipline

Start Date: Between 1 August 2026 and 1 July 2027 Introduction: Richard Feynman famously quoted ‘turbulence is the most important unsolved problem of classical physics’. Understanding and modelling turbulent flow physics will unlock a vast potential for optimising many applications of the energy and transportation sectors. While the last century has produced breakthroughs in our understanding of turbulent flows, these are confined in two extreme and polar-opposite regimes: when turbulence is highly or when it is lowly strained. Still, the physics of the in-between regime of intermediate-strain, which is critical for a wide variety of engineering and environmental applications, remains unexplored. You will join a team of researchers that experimentally quantify the flow-physics of fundamental turbulent flows, as their mean strain is varied from high to low levels, and will document the failure of classical theories to describe intermediate strain regimes. The produced data-set will be utilized to develop a novel theoretical framework for intermediate strain turbulence, based on previous work conducted in Imperial College London. The project will either rely on laboratory experiments, conducted in the state-of-the-art wind tunnel facilities of the Aeronautics Department, or on numerical simulations (DNS) performed in HPC. You can expect to become an expert in aerodynamics and turbulent flows, and to have developed skills in experimental fluid mechanics, statistics, data processing, machine learning, and mathematical modelling.