2016 Osborne Reynolds Research Student Award

14th July 2016

School of MACE, University of Manchester

The Osborne Reynolds Research Student Award was a great success, including oral presentations, a poster session and two keynote presentations. We are again grateful to the School of MACE for hosting the event, to Prof. Brian Launder and his very effective team for handling organization and to Prof. Michael Leschziner for co-ordinating the reviews.  We are also grateful for the support of the industrial sponsors – ANSYS, BAE Systems, CFMS, EDF Energy, GE and Zenotech, and the chairs of the individual sessions: Prof. Jim McGuirk (Loughborough University), Prof. Mark Savill (Cranfield University), and Prof. Wolfgang Rodi (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology).

The finalists for the oral presentation this year were: 

Pawel Baj, Imperial College London: "Identification of canonical features of multi-scale generated turbulence”,  

James Baker, Manchester University: "Segregation-induced finger formation in granular free-surface flows",  

Konstantinos Bergeles, Imperial College London: "Liquid atomisation: generating the finest droplets",  

Rowan Brackston, Imperial College London: "Drag reduction of a bluff body by reflectional symmetry-breaking",  

Robert Bleischwitz, Southampton University: "Exploiting fluid-structure interaction of membrane wings", and 

Manan Thakkar, Southampton University: "Turbulent flow over irregular rough surfaces using DNS". 

In addition, there was a dazzling complementary array of thirteen posters to view over the extended lunch break with topics ranging from the hydrodynamics of plesiosaurs [marine contemporaries of dinosaurs] to truck underbody aerodynamics; from fluid-structure interaction using the SPH immersed boundary method to synthetic jets for reducing drag and many more. As an innovation, this year all the poster presenters gave a short oral summary of their research to the audience immediately before lunch. As last year, the audience members individually voted to choose the winners of the poster competition. 

Sandwiching the oral and poster presentations there were two keynote lectures: 

Professor Kemo Hanjalic, Delft University of Technology: "RANS Turbulence Modelling: Time for a Requiem … or a Spring Symphony", and  

Dr Peter Vincent, Imperial College London: "From Arteries to Aircraft: Computational Fluid Dynamics across Disciplines". 

The quality of the student work presented was again extremely high, and the deliveries were engaging and well prepared.  After some deliberation, the panel awarded the oral presentation medals to Robert Bleischwitz – Southampton University (1st Place), Rowan Brackston, Imperial College London (2nd Place) and Manan Thacker, Southampton University (3rd place). 

In addition, the audience ballot identified the 3 winning posters:

Joseph O’Connor, University of Manchester: “Fluid–structure Interactions of Ciliary Systems using the Lattice-Boltzmann Immersed Boundary Method”, 

Pablo Ouro, Cardiff University: “Large Eddy Simulation of Tidal Turbines”, and 

Khalil Abo Amsha, University of Manchester: “Computational Modelling of the Flow and Heat Transfer in Dimpled Channels”. 

Professor Michael Leschziner kindly announced presentations.

From left: David Standingford (ERCOFTAC UKPC), Robert Bleischwitz (Southampton, Oral Presentation 1st Place), Rowan Brackston (Imperial College, Oral Presentation 2nd Place), Manan Thakkar (Southampton, Oral Presentation 3rd Place), Prof. Michael Leschziner (Chairman of the Judging Panel), Prof. Brian Launder (Host and Convener), Khalil Abo-Amsha (Manchester, Poster Winner), Pablo Ouro (Cardiff, Poster Winner) and Joseph O'Connor (Manchester, Poster Winner). 

The three oral presentation winners have been entered into the Europe-wide competition for the da Vinci Award to be held in Stockholm in October 2016.  Plans are being formed to hold the 2017 Osborne Reynolds Day again at Manchester University.  

Prof. Tony Hutton (1946 - 2016)

In fond memory of Professor Tony Hutton, who sadly passed away earlier this year, Prof. Mike Reeks gave a brief eulogy and insight into the nature and works of this brilliant man. Tony will be missed by us all. 

Event sponsors 

We are grateful for the support of: