National Wind Tunnel Facility

There are presently about 150 wind tunnels in the UK of which roughly 75 are in the university sector. Owing to the dual funding structure of research in UK, these receive government support through a HEFCE teaching budget as well as from funding councils, industry and overseas agencies. This proposal relates to those facilities funded essentially, but not exclusively by research, and not those retained principally to support the teaching mission of individual universities. The basis of the National Facility model is primarily to focus resource on (1) fewer 'outward-facing' national facilities open to all UK-based researchers; (2) institutions demonstrating a symbiosis of facility and expertise and prepared to demonstrate best practice; (3) institutions that demonstrate a clear, on-going commitment to these national facilities. The number of partners in this proposal has been selected to cover a range of strategic facilities, and to match potential take-up of national facilities by researchers working in most areas of experimental aerodynamics primarily within EPSRC's remit. The National Facility will support research addressing multi-sectoral problems, although there is a clear focus on the aerospace sector. The proposal includes low- and high-speed flows (Mach numbers in excess of about 0.6) and justifies a subset of facilities of national importance to form the National Wind Tunnel Facility based at seven institutions.

In the low-speed regime, relevant to transport (road and marine), geophysical flows, urban environment, sport, and wind energy applications, the medium-scale facilities Cranfield, IC and Southampton form the basis of key innovation. These facilities will address such problems as drag reduction, vortex-induced vibration, aeroelasticity, gust unsteadiness, and dispersion in the urban environment. Laser-based instrumentation features strongly in these facilities (e.g. particle-image velocimetry, laser vibrometry) as well as high-fidelity force balances. A guiding principle is that these facilities should offer complementarity in terms of the types of experiment they will support: thus while Cranfield will support high-quality force measurements, IC and Southampton will provide expertise in new techniques such as tomographic reconstruction of PIV data. The low-turbulence tunnel at City is of international renown, being one of only three such tunnels in the world that can match atmospheric free-stream turbulence levels appropriate for transition research. The de Havilland tunnel at Glasgow will be supported to maintain pitch/heave capability with gust generation.

Owing to its significant contribution to the UK's GDP, it is essential that the UK maintains its dominant position in the aerospace sector, through the stimulation of innovation via university research in high-speed flows. Trans/supersonic tunnels at Cambridge, City and IC offer a unique blend of facilities and expertise to support UK aerospace in such areas as shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction. Ground breaking research in hypersonic flows is currently underway at Oxford and IC. These facilities enable research across a range of high-speed regimes and, together with high-speed laser diagnostics, will allow UK researchers to tackle future sector-relevant problems.

Research in fluid dynamics and aerodynamics underpins many areas (e.g. microfluidics, complex fluids) and is of significant importance to aerospace, process industries and emerging technologies such as wind power. Investment will be used to effect all-round transformative benefit, to drive innovation across a broad range of sectors. Industry will benefit from ready access to scientific advances, which will benefit their design processes and product performance. End-users are cross-sectoral, aerospace, automotive, built-environment, civil, chemical, marine, energy, environmental, and medical industries. The proposal is aligned with major Government strategic priorities concerning the economy and jobs, for example, the announcement in July 2013 by David Willets of £60m investment from the UK Space Agency in the development of the British-designed, air-breathing SABRE rocket engine. Flows of large-scale processes or with complex boundary conditions are beyond current computational resources, and experimental studies can be used to not only confirm predictions but also to provide fundamental insights. The International Review of Mathematical Sciences 2010 (IRMS 2010) highlighted the UK as a world leader in fluid mechanics, especially the theoretical aspects. The best research often most effective when the complementary skills of theoreticians, computationalists and experimentalists are brought together. As research becomes more focussed at fewer institutions, as reflected in this proposal, in order to maintain internationally competitive research, the need for cost-effectiveness is greater than ever.

Leading research-intensive UK universities will pool expertise to create strategically important national facilities to rival our principal competitors in the US and EU. This will build intellectual capability by the fostering of young talent, researchers conversant with emerging technologies and trained in the sophisticated experimental techniques that underpin the science base. These exceptionally able researchers will progress to permanent positions in UK universities to maintain their status and underpin the pull-through from research to higher TRL across a range of sectors. They will also move to senior positions in industry and, owing to the ubiquity of fluid flow, will facilitate engagement with a broad range of end-users. For instance, the UK aerospace industry turnover alone is £20.5 bn, 17% share of global market, directly employing 101,000 people. R&D spillovers from the aerospace sector in particular have a major impact on the wider economy.

The research portfolio of all institutions is clearly relevant to a broad range of sectors as evidenced by the strategic partnerships of these universities with Rolls-Royce, Airbus, BAE Systems, Lloyds Register, BP, Shell and many other private and public sector entities. Industry will benefit from ready access to scientific advances, which will benefit their design processes and lead to improved performance of their products. Improvements to the efficiency of fluid-based systems can lead to huge savings in energy, with concomitant reductions in CO2 emissions. For example, we can expect wing designs with significantly reduced drag for both civil and military aircraft, flow control for autonomous systems, improved turbine efficiency and propeller performance in marine applications, significant improvements in the design of process equipment for the chemical, pharmaceutical, food-and-drink and oil-and-gas industries. In turn, the UK academic fluid dynamics community will benefit from the exposure to new problems related to the UK aerospace, automotive (including Formula 1), civil and environmental, marine, chemical and medical industries.