Department of Aeronautics (Imperial)

🎓Today we're celebrating all of our extraordinary graduates on Commemoration Day! 🎓✨ hashtag #ourimperial

🌟 Join us for Professor Zahra Sharif Khodaei’s Inaugural Lecture! Zahra's lecture will explore the latest aerospace vehicle advancements and the crucial role of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) in enhancing safety and efficiency. 🗓 Weds 13 November, 17.30 - 18.30 GMT 📍 Online and in-person, City and Guilds 200 (no registration required) As a Professor in Aerospace Structural Durability & Health Monitoring, Zahra has been at the forefront of incorporating smart technologies into air vehicle design and operation. Her research includes condition-based maintenance, leveraging sensor data, AI, and machine learning to revolutionise aerospace safety.

🎉 Congratulations to Jonathan Morrison and shahrokh shahpar, FRAeSoc, FAIAA on becoming Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering! Professor Shahrokh Shahpar is a Rolls-Royce Fellow, Senior Aerothermal Design Specialist at Rolls-Royce and Visiting Professor at the Department of Aeronautics. Professor Jonathan Morrison, Chair in Experimental Fluid Dynamics at the Department of Aeronautics, has been recognised for his exceptional contributions to understanding turbulent flow and the instabilities that lead to ‘chaos’ and turbulence. His multidisciplinary research combines smart materials, modern control theory, and fluid mechanics to improve fluid-based systems, with a particular focus on reducing drag, energy loss, and emissions, especially in the transport sector. This innovative approach has driven significant advancements in efficiency and sustainability across various industries. As the founder of the National Wind Tunnel Facility (NWTF), Jonathan addressed under-investment in UK wind tunnels by establishing a strategically vital network across 12 universities, fostering research collaboration between academia and industry. His work with QinetiQ as a Royal Society Industry Fellow on reducing drag for new airframe designs is also reshaping future aerospace developments.

🌟 A paper co-authored by Maryam Reza, Farbod Faraji and Aaron Knoll, has been recognised by the UK’s Institute of Physics (IOP) Publishing as one of the 20 highest impact articles published in the past year!   The team’s work on the Reduced-Order Particle-In-Cell (RO-PIC) approach represents a breakthrough in computational plasma physics, enabling unprecedented studies of various plasma geometries with significant reductions in computational time while maintaining high accuracy. This innovation has the potential to greatly enhance the efficiency of plasma technologies, which are critical to everything from microchip manufacturing to satellite propulsion.   Within aeronautics, the methodology behind RO-PIC could drive the next generation of computationally efficient models, facilitating highly detailed studies of real-size aircraft, wind farms, and other large-scale systems - critical for advancing toward net-zero goals. Read the paper ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/eg72mffv

🌪️ Congratulations to Dr Konstantinos Steiros who has been awarded a €1.5M European Research Council (ERC) grant for his project, ‘ONSET - Beyond self-similarity in turbulence’. Dr Steiros' research focuses on the complex physics of turbulent flows, a phenomenon that plays a critical role in countless applications, from oceanic currents to the aerodynamics of wind turbines. By advancing understanding of turbulence, this project has the potential to unlock new possibilities for applications across the energy and transportation sectors.

Excited and proud to see the release of this NASA Technical Report https://lnkd.in/dbHESmsJ, comparing performance of a clf5605 rotor blade airfoil - which flew on Ingenuity in 2021 - with a new roamx-0201 concept developed at NASA Ames Research Center, via low-Reynolds yet compressible experiments in the Mars Wind Tunnel at Tohoku University. Work was undertaken as part of the NASA Ames Research Center ROAMX project, which aims to significantly enhance rotorcraft capabilities on Mars, and data was collected during our visit to Tohoku University last summer. Stay tuned for associated CFD analysis in the coming months!

https://lnkd.in/gVZk29my Meeting ID: 931 2027 4727 Passcode: 640322 Maria Ribera Vicent

👏🏻 Huge congratulations to Aero PhD students, Elise Özalp and Hamda Al-Ali who have been named as the UK’s only recipients of the Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowship 2024. Elise's research looks to advance fluid dynamics by integrating machine learning with physical laws to better predict complex systems, and Hamda's work is pioneering plasma propulsion technology for space exploration with her innovative Spherical Tokamak Thruster. The fellowship not only highlights their exceptional PhD research but also underscores the importance of female representation in the aerospace sector. Read more ⬇️

🚨 Registration for our Research Showcase closes this Friday! Sign up to join us for an insightful afternoon of poster displays, expert panels and a keynote speech delivered by Sue Partridge. 🗓️ 4 September, 1pm to 6pm 🏢 Huxley Building

Professor Emile Greenhalgh recently led a Structural Power Composites Showcase held at the Royal Academy of Engineering, Prince Philip House, with delegates from 40+ industries, including Airbus, Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems and United States Air Force. The event highlighted the transformative potential, adoption strategies and challenges of structural power composites - materials that combine mechanical strength with energy storage, eliminating the need for bulky batteries. Leading academics presented the latest advances, focusing on how these materials can drive the development of ultra-thin phones, streamlined vehicles, and energy-efficient infrastructure. Read more ⬇️