PhD Studentship: A Novel Dynamical Systems View of Wall-bounded Turbulence

Are you passionate about pushing the boundaries of fluid-mechanics research to contribute to greener transportation and energy and accelerate the transition to net-zero?

Join the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Thermofluids Group at the University of Sheffield for a fully-funded PhD on mathematical modelling and control of turbulent flows.

Working under the supervision of Dr Elena Marensi, you will be part of  a vibrant team of researchers within the Sheffield Fluid Mechanics Group as well as benefiting from close collaborations with world-leading experts across the UK and Europe.

About the project: Turbulence is the primary cause of frictional losses in transport processes (vehicular transport, distribution pipelines) and the main contributor to drag in wall-bounded flows. Estimates show that the energy wasted in overcoming this drag accounts for 25% of all UK carbon emissions.  Even a few percentage drag reduction would have a huge impact on how we face the current crisis related to global warming. Surprisingly, recent experiments and simulations have shown the possibility to completely suppress turbulence by momentarily making the flow even more turbulent. On a theoretical basis, the reason why the above method works is still a mystery. This project thus aims at investigating relaminarisation events and flow-control strategy due to energetic impulses by exploring a novel dynamical systems picture of wall-bounded turbulence. The problem will be tackled with a combination of state-of-the-art advanced mathematical tools and numerical simulations, and the new understanding proposed here will be used to develop novel control strategies that are applicable in practice.

You will gain significant experience in:

• Computational fluid mechanics using in-house high-fidelity software and high-performance computing.
• Flow instabilities, transition to turbulence and dynamical systems.
• Analysing large data-sets and developing codes for data processing.
• Working in a multidisciplinary/international environment.
• Communicating research findings to a broad audience through presentations and scientific journal articles.

There will plenty of opportunities to attend national and international conferences and visiting research collaborators in Europe.

For informal project queries, please contact Dr. Elena Marensi (e.marensi@sheffield.ac.uk).

About the Department: PhD programmes at Sheffield provide students with the opportunity to study within one of the UK’s leading Mechanical Engineering departments, internationally renowned for long-standing success in research which looks at some of today’s most challenging issues and develops new innovations to solve them. The expertise of our staff covers a wide range of specialist areas and our mission is to carry out research in fundamental science through to practical industrial applications.

ALSO, Sheffield is a great and affordable place to live!  Check it out...

Requirements: You should have (or about to receive) a degree in engineering, physics or applied mathematics (at least a UK 2:1 honours grade or its international equivalents). Strong mathematical background and good programming skills. Desirable: final year project in fluid mechanics.

This studentship includes a fee bursary to cover the UK (home) rate, and an annual tax-free maintenance stipend at the standard UK Research rate (£19,237 in 2024-25) for up to 3.5 years. Overseas applicants will need to secure additional funding to cover the difference in fees, or with their own funds which is approximately £22,884 per year.

To apply, please use our on-line PhD application form and contact m.i.boulis@sheffield.ac.uk if you have any questions.

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