Adelaide University operates a system similar to that in Scotland whereby an Honours degree is awarded after a year of post-graduate work. My Honours project dealt with the use of finite element methods to investigate the stability of plane Poiseuille flow. At Cambridge I studied flow through branching tubes and channels. I used both analytic and numerical methods. The main thrust of the work was aimed at understanding the qualitative nature of flow through bifurcations because of its relevance to the genesis of atheroma (the first stage of atherosclerosis), and to flow in the lungs.
At Oxford I joined the medical engineering group directed by Dr. B.J.Bellhouse and developed numerical solutions to the unsteady Navier-Stokes equations in order to investigate the pulsatile laminar flows which occurred in membrane separation devices being developed by the group. The work produced an understanding of the vortex mixing process and contributed to our knowledge of unsteady separation. The initial numerical discoveries were subsequently confirmed with flow visualisation experiments.
At Bristol I continued to study unsteady separation, both numerically and experimentally. The work resulted in clarification of the different flow regimes which exist in unsteady flow and in the important discovery of a wave of vorticies during unsteady flow past a backward facing step. Other work was carried out in collaboration with Prof. P.G.Drazin and involved using a CRAY computer to study the existence of multiple solutions to the steady Navier Stokes equations at Reynolds numbers under a few hundred. During the period I was at Bristol I held an SERC contract and acted as a consultant to ICI.
My work during the period I spend in industry is described elsewhere.
My research interests since returning to Oxford are best found on my research interests page.
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