On the second week of September, the first Fluids UK Conference took place at the Imperial College in London. Several researchers across the UK and overseas gathered together to share their investigations in a very wide range of disciplines across fluid dynamics. A large number of researchers from the Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics (AFM) and the Fluid-Structure Interactions (FSI) groups of the University of Southampton were also present in the event.

I am Bernat Font Garcia a first year PhD student and I recently attended my first conference as a speaker. I was part of a big group coming from the University of Southampton, one of the universities which brought more researchers into the event.
A total of 96 presentations were delivered during the three days of the conference. Presenters were either PhD students or post-docs, mostly. Each presenter had 10 minutes to explain the topic and 2 minutes were scheduled for questions. It was a challenging exercise to condense one year of work into such a short amount of time, although I can image this was even more difficult for students in the last year of the doctorate or post-docs researchers!
The topic of my presentation was: “A two-dimensional model for three-dimensional symmetric flows”. Using the well-known backward-facing step test case, the aim is to obtain the steady solution of the three-dimensional case at the symmetry plane using a two-dimensional model. Hence, instead of carrying a three-dimensional simulation, the solution is achieved by the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations plus additional terms. The main outcome of this work is the notable reduction of the computational time required to achieve the three-dimensional solution for symmetric or spatially-periodic flows.

Overall, it was very inspiring to get to know what topics are currently being investigated in fluid dynamics and to meet people working within this field. Also, it was the perfect opportunity to communicate my work and conclude the first year of my doctorate.

Recently Laura Marimon Giovannetti, a final year PhD student in FSI currently completing a 10 month placement at Ben Ainslie Racing  attended the Sixth International Conference on Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Computation (SEMC 2016) in Cape Town, South Africa and reports below. We offer our congratulations to her on winning the best paper in the young researchers award category. She reports on some of the key parts of the conference.

The conference featured  360 papers with authors representing 60 countries from all five continents. With a great number of fields of structural mechanics and a large number of papers, the competition for the best paper in the Young Researchers Award (under 35) was hard, but I managed to bring the award home. I was presented to the opening ceremony as the winner of the prize and I had the possibility to present my research in the largest room! I was very pleased with the compliment received for my paper by the conference organizer Prof. A. Zingoni of the University of Cape Town. Following my presentation I had some interesting questions and all the people in the room were pleased with my work on passive adaptive composite foil design based on coupled FSI using StarCCM+ and based on our validation studies in the R.J.Mitchell wind tunnel using synchronised PIV and DIC.
The topics of the conference were very broad, from fluid-structure interaction to soil-structures interaction (for earthquake damage-prevention) to composites and sandwich materials. Within the three days of the conference we had six parallel sessions running all day.

Keynote speakers were Prof. Kim Rasmussen (University of Sydney, Australia), Prof. Adnan Ibrahimbegovic (Universite Technologie Compiegne, France), Prof. Klaus-Jürgen Bathe (MIT, USA), Prof. Amr Elnashai (Pennsylvania State University, USA), Prof. Jian-Fei Chen (Queen’s University of Belfast, UK) and Prof. Guido De Roeck (KU Leuven, Belgium). All the keynotes were focusing on different aspects of structural mechanics and the ones that I liked the most were the one from Prof. Jian-Fei Chen and the one from Prof. Amr Elnashai.
 

I have also met a large number of new people (from fellow PhD students to professors) and I had the opportunity to go with some new friends (PhD students at Ferrari) to visit Cape of Good Hope and the African penguins in Simon’s town.
 
I’d like to thank both the University of Southampton and Land Rover Ben Ainslie Racing for allowing me to attend this extremely interesting conference. I also would like to encourage people to travel to Cape Town, the city and its surroundings are beautiful and you can learn a lot about the history of the country visiting the Apartheid prison in Robben Island, where Mandela was held prisoner for 17 years.

Recently, the Maritime Robotics Laboratory of the Fluid Structure Interactions Group hosted visitors from the Council for Science and Technology, Cabinet Office Analysis and Insight Team and from the Government Office for Science. They were given an overview of the development of maritime autonomous and robotic systems, developments in sensor technologies, and future directions of research in the field. The visit was supported by Dr Jon Downes, Dr Nick Townsend, Dr Blair Thornton and Prof Ajit Shenoi.

The MRL’s fleet of vehicles was on display as well as the excellent facilities within the Lab within easy access of B185 for trialling performance in the new towing tank.
 

MIT student Fiona Grant spent her summer internship in FSI working with Drs Nick Townsend and Gabe Weymouth working on the Maritime Robotics Lab vehicle Fleur. She uses wave energy to self propel herself into or with the waves.  Fiona’s report below details some of her activities.  We enjoyed her company and that of our five other interns and are grateful to our funding partners for their support and in particular the University’s EXCEL scheme.

This summer I worked on a project studying the behavior of flapping foil systems. Flapping foils are devices modeled on the swimming mechanism for cetaceans and many fish. These devices have been widely researched, and it has been shown through experiments and simulation that flapping foils can be used to both harvest energy and produce thrust. The relationship between the magnitude and phase of the foil heave and pitch motions defines these two modes. Flapping foils have been successfully implemented in several full scale applications, including ships and wave energy converters (WECs). Currently, the optimal control and stability of flapping foil systems is being investigated, and more research is needed to solve this problem.
The system for this project was a model vessel with a pair of flapping foils attached at the stern. The goal for the summer was to gain an understanding of the dynamic behavior of the system and design a velocity controller for the vessel. I began by modeling the dynamics of the vessel and a single foil in calm water. I then worked on setting up the hardware, LabVIEW code, and driver software to control the linear motor that actuates the foil. In the final two weeks, we were able to run tests in the towing tank and collect data on the open loop response of the vessel and foil system for a range of frequencies and amplitudes.
This internship was a great experience. I was able to put my knowledge of control theory and experimentation techniques into practice and affirmed my desire to study control systems in graduate school. Throughout the internship I was able to work with computer simulation, hardware and software integration, and model testing. During my project I had guidance from my supervisors, but also a level of independence that allowed me to explore the topic and make my own choices about the research. I now feel more prepared for graduate school and excited about continuing my studies.