About the project
This project investigates turbulent wakes around buildings and cuboid structures using wind tunnel testing and computational fluid dynamics to develop predictive tools for wind loading and climate resilience.
Extreme wind events pose significant challenges to urban and port infrastructure, influencing safety, operational efficiency, and resilience. Understanding how turbulent wakes develop and interact around bluff structures such as buildings in urban environment or shipping containers in port environments is essential for designing environments that can withstand gusty and highly variable winds. This project addresses this challenge using a combination of advanced experimental and computational approaches.
The research is a collaboration between the University of Southampton and the A*STAR Institute of High-Performance Computing (IHPC) in Singapore, with a potential opportunity for a 1-2 year research attachment at IHPC. You'll investigate how wakes generated by isolated and grouped cuboids evolve under realistic atmospheric boundary-layer conditions and how variations in aspect ratio, spacing, and arrangement influence local turbulence and wind loads.
A combination of wind tunnel testing at Southampton and high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling at IHPC will provide detailed measurements of aerodynamic forces, pressure distributions, and flow structures, while validating numerical predictions of wake interactions. These methods will help uncover fundamental mechanisms that govern wake behaviour and multi-body effects in complex environments.
A key outcome is the development of a reduced-order wake model capable of predicting flow behaviour as a function of wind speed, direction, and geometry. This tool can inform passive control strategies to mitigate gust effects and guide climate-resilient planning in urban and port settings.
You'll join a diverse and inclusive team to tackle challenging problems and develop new skills. The project scope is flexible, offering opportunities to present your work at international conferences and to collaborate with researchers worldwide. You'll be trained in state-of-the-art experimental diagnostics, computational fluid dynamics tools, and advanced data analysis methods, enabling you to pursue a career in academia or industry.
The School of Engineering is committed to promoting equality, diversity inclusivity as demonstrated by our Athena SWAN award. We welcome all applicants regardless of their gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or age, and will give full consideration to applicants seeking flexible working patterns and those who have taken a career break. The University has a generous maternity policy, onsite childcare facilities, and offers a range of benefits to help ensure employees’ well-being and work-life balance. The University of Southampton is committed to sustainability and has been awarded the Platinum EcoAward.
