10th Osborne Reynolds Colloquium

and Research Student Award

27thJune 2012

University of Southampton

The 10th Osborne Reynolds Colloquium and Research Student Award, held on 27th June at the University of Southampton was a tremendous success. As with previous years, in addition to the finalists’ presentations, the audience was treated to two superb invited speakers.   

Dr. Paolo Adami from Rolls-Royce spoke on the complexity andchallenges of modelling multiple blade-row systems in turbo-machinery,highlighting the requirement to model detailed geometry and the drive towards unsteady simulation.

Professor Keith Moffatt kindly presented a fascinating insight into the life and work of George Batchelor, covering the early years of his career in Australia through to some of his later publications.  The character of the man behind the great scientific contribution was brilliantly exposed through detailed reference to a selection of his papers and personal anecdotes. The session concluded with a spirited exploration of future challenges for fluid dynamics – particularly and appropriately in the area of high Reynolds number flow.

Given the quality of submissions to the student prize this year,an unprecedented 7 finalists were invited to present their work:

Edward Smith (Imperial College London): Reynolds Transport Theorem in a Discrete System.

Andrea Maffioli (Cambridge University). On the Formation of Pancake Eddies in Stratified Turbulence.

Marco Leoni (Bristol University). Order and Hydrodynamic Fluctuations in Active Suspensions.

Karthik Kashinath (Cambridge University). Nonlinear Dynamics of Thermoacoustic Systems with Premixed Flames.

Davide Cavaliere (Cambridge University). Blow-off in Gas Turbine Combustors.

Fred Zhang (Newcastle University). The Modelling of Particle Resuspension in aTurbulent Boundary Layer. .

Johannes Kerl (Imperial College London). Three-Dimensional Curvature and Flame Displacement Speed Measurements using a Quad plane Particle Image Velocimetry Technique.

The quality of the work presented was extremely high, and the deliveries were engaging and well prepared. After some deliberation, the panel awarded the medals to Karthik Kashinath – Cambridge University (Gold), Edward Smith – Imperial College London(Silver) and Johannes Kerl – Imperial College London (Bronze).  Professor Moffatt kindly made the presentations.

  Osborne Reynolds Day 2012 - Finalists , L-R, David Cavaliere (Cambridge), Marco Leoni (Bristol), Edward Smith(ICL-Silver), Prof. Keith Moffat, Karthik Kashinath (Cambridge - Gold), Johannes Kerl (ICL - Bronze), Andrea Mafiolli (Cambridge), Fred (Fan) Zhang (Newcastle).

A number of the participants travelled internationally to attend the event, and this would not have been possible without the generous sponsorship from the Institute of Physics (John Brindley), ANSYS (Chris Carey),BAE Systems (Rob Banim) and ARA Ltd (Peter Curtis). We are very grateful for their ongoing support.

Zenotech Ltd is pleased and honoured to have been involved in organising the day.  Established in 2012 by company principals David Standingford and Jamil Appa, the company is developing technology to dramatically improve the performance and online availability of engineering software – particularly computational fluid dynamics.  It is anticipated that the solid UK academic base will be instrumental in delivering the next generation of analysis tools. 

David Standingford                                                                                                          Zenotech Ltd, ERCOFTAC, UK, PC