| Description |
'Efficient use of energy and suppression of environmental pollution due to harmful emissions and noise (e.g. from aircraft near urban areas) are of paramount importance for sustainable development. New techniques are urgently needed for process intensification, reduced fuel consumption, pollution and noise. The central aim of this proposal is to address some of these problems by applying a new class of multi-scale turbulent flows that have a unique feature: they can be specifically designed for efficiency enhancement in many applications. Research in the past 10 years has demonstrated the power of these flows for process intensification, mixing enhancement, noise suppression and increased lift to drag ratios for wings of a given surface area. Many different industrial sectors such as the mixing, aeronautical, automotive, power generation and wind engineering industries can benefit from this work. Seven private companies operating in these sectors are associate partners in the proposal. Application examples include new static and dynamic mixers, silent spoilers, new efficient blades and wings suitable for aeronautical, racing car and wind energy applications, improved heat exchangers suitable for process or nuclear industries etc. In this IDP, we place particular emphasis on the quality of the training and learning experience of the early career researchers (13 in total) who will take part: we have put together an extensive training programme of 32 sets of lectures from academic and industrial partners and all researchers/engineers will be seconded to one or more academic or industrial institutions. The training includes a wide panoply of experimental and computational tools of the broadest applicability. We see this programme as the beginning of an activity with much larger scope to bring multi-scale bespoke flow concepts from the academic lab to industry together with the engineers who will have the technical background to help industry produce innovative products.'
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