The world's oil supply is decreasing rapidly and over the next 10 or 20 years the price per barrel will spiral inexorably. Aviation is a significant consumer of oil and is also implicated in global warming through its generation of massive quantities of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide. Aircraft noise continues to be an increasingly important problem as airports expand. For these reasons aviation as we know it now will rapidly become unviable. There is no single solution to the problem and enormous changes to engines, airframe design, scheduling and indeed people's expectations of unlimited air travel are inevitable. Here we address one of the most important issues, improved aerodynamics, and develop the underpinning technology for Laminar Flow Control (LFC), the technology of drag reduction on aircraft. This will become the cornerstone of aircraft design. Even modest savings in drag of the order of 10% translate into huge savings in fuel costs and huge reductions in atmospheric pollution. Applications of the technology to military aircraft where range is often the main requirement and marine applications are similarly important. The development of viable LFC designs requires sophisticated mathematical, computational and experimental investigations of the onset of transition to turbulence and its control. Existing tools are too crude to be useful and contain little input from the flow physics. Major hurdles to be overcome concern: a) How do we specify generic input disturbances for flow past a wing in a messy atmosphere in the presence of surface imperfections, flexing, rain, insects and a host of other complicating features b) How do we solve the mathematical problems associated with linear and nonlinear disturbance growth in complex 3D flows c) How do we find a criterion for the onset of transition based on flow physics which is accurate enough to avoid the massive over-design associated with existing LFC strategies yet efficient enough to be useable in the design office d) How can we use experiments in the laboratory to predict what happens in flight experiments e) How can we devise control strategies robust enough to be used on civilian aircraft f) How can we quantify the manufacturing tolerances such as say surface waviness or bumps needed to maintain laminar flow The above challenges are huge and can only be overcome by innovative research based on the mathematical, computational and experimental excellence of a team like the one we have assembled. The solution of these problems will lead to a giant leap in our understanding of transition prediction and enable LFC to be deployed. The programme is based around a unique team of researchers covering all theoretical, computational, and experimental aspects of the problem together with the necessary expertise to make sure the work can be deployed by industry. Indeed our partnership with most notably EADS and Airbus UK will put the UK aeronautics industry in the lead to develop the new generation of LFC wings. The programme is focussed primarily on aerodynamics but the tools we develop are relevant in a wide range of problems. In Chemical Engineering there has long been an interest in how to pump fluids efficiently in pipelines and how flow instabilities associated with interfaces can compromise certain manufacturing processes. In Earth Sciences the formation of river bed patterns behind topology or man-made obstructions is governed by the same process that describes the initiation of disturbances on wings. Likewise surface patterns on Mars can be explained by the instability mechanisms of sediment carrying rivers. In Atmospheric Dynamics and Oceanography a host of crucial flow phenomena are intimately related to the basic instabilities of a 3D flow over a curved aerofoil. Our visitor programme will ensure that our work impinges on these and other closely related areas and that likewise we are aware of ideas which can be profitably be used in aerodynamics.

The achievements of modern research and their rapid progress from theory to application are increasingly underpinned by computation. Computational approaches are often hailed as a new third pillar of science - in addition to empirical and theoretical work. While its breadth makes computation almost as ubiquitous as mathematics as a key tool in science and engineering, it is a much younger discipline and stands to benefit enormously from building increased capacity and increased efforts towards integration, standardization, and professionalism. The development of new ideas and techniques in computing is extremely rapid, the progress enabled by these breakthroughs is enormous, and their impact on society is substantial: modern technologies ranging from the Airbus 380, MRI scans and smartphone CPUs could not have been developed without computer simulation; progress on major scientific questions from climate change to astronomy are driven by the results from computational models; major investment decisions are underwritten by computational modelling. Furthermore, simulation modelling is emerging as a key tool within domains experiencing a data revolution such as biomedicine and finance. This progress has been enabled through the rapid increase of computational power, and was based in the past on an increased rate at which computing instructions in the processor can be carried out. However, this clock rate cannot be increased much further and in recent computational architectures (such as GPU, Intel Phi) additional computational power is now provided through having (of the order of) hundreds of computational cores in the same unit. This opens up potential for new order of magnitude performance improvements but requires additional specialist training in parallel programming and computational methods to be able to tap into and exploit this opportunity. Computational advances are enabled by new hardware, and innovations in algorithms, numerical methods and simulation techniques, and application of best practice in scientific computational modelling. The most effective progress and highest impact can be obtained by combining, linking and simultaneously exploiting step changes in hardware, software, methods and skills. However, good computational science training is scarce, especially at post-graduate level. The Centre for Doctoral Training in Next Generation Computational Modelling will develop 55+ graduate students to address this skills gap. Trained as future leaders in Computational Modelling, they will form the core of a community of computational modellers crossing disciplinary boundaries, constantly working to transfer the latest computational advances to related fields. By tackling cutting-edge research from fields such as Computational Engineering, Advanced Materials, Autonomous Systems and Health, whilst communicating their advances and working together with a world-leading group of academic and industrial computational modellers, the students will be perfectly equipped to drive advanced computing over the coming decades.

Composite materials, such as those based on carbon and glass fibre reinforced polymer play an important role in driving global decarbonisation, through corrosion resistant and high-performance products and light-weighting sectors such as transport that lead to improved fuel economy and so reduce emissions. Our proposal targets sustainability of high value composite components, through embedding ultra-thin glass planar sensors, that can be used during manufacture and through a component's life to assess parameters linked to structural performance. Hence informed decisions can be made to extend useable life and reduce the scrappage associated with manufacture. This makes most efficient use of our limited resource of energy and raw materials. In addition to environmental sustainability, this work will also have economic advantages enabling the UK economy to continue to grow innovative technology and associated highly skilled jobs. Despite the huge lightweighting benefit of composites they are not utilised to their full potential due to variability caused at the manufacturing stage. Composite components and the composite material they are made from are produced together. To achieve the desired material geometry features are included in their laminated structure that generate defects. To realise their full set of advantages new methodologies must be devised that support sustainable deployment integrated during production. At the manufacturing stage, many composite components are consigned to scrap before they go into service because of defect evolution. We are proposing a new non-invasive means to better monitor defect evolution and their affect on the final structural performance of the part. Once a composite component goes into service it is often heavier than necessary due to the design parameters necessary for safety assurance. Having an effective means of monitoring critical regions would motivate a means to reduce structural mass by reducing material usage, which in turn would allow increasing payload and or support a shift to heavier but more efficient designs. We are proposing a sensing methodology that can indicate a reduction in structural performance, as our sensors allow changes in through thickness strain to be captured. A laminated composite structure is designed to carry the load in the plane of the laminations as it is weak through the thickness of laminate. Any change in through thickness strain would be a prime indicator of a reduction in performance. At the end of the composite component's life there are currently limited options for recycling composites with 15% of the 110,000 tonnes of composites produced in the UK each year being reused at their end of life. Our sensors would support reuse and repurposing of large composite structures because a complete history of the component life cycle would be available through monitoring informing designers of the suitability to be deployed in other structural applications. To highlight the advantages of using the novel sensors we have chosen three important case studies/exemplars. The first is in the manufacture of thermosetting composites replacing the costly and time-consuming autoclave with microwave processing, which reduces energy consumption significantly. Our planar glass sensors will be non-conducting and so permit comprehensive in process monitoring, supporting uptake of microwave curing. As described above the through thickness strength of laminated composite materials is limited, hence 3D fibre architectures are being explored. Our second case study focuses on braiding process exploiting the sensor's geometry to fix it into a known position during the consolidation of the 3D fibre architecture in a thermoplastic matrix. Finally, we demonstrate the versatility of our sensors in an infield retrofitting application to extend the life of concrete infrastructure using composite repair patches.

Multi-phase, trans/supercritical and non-Newtonian fluid flows with heat and mass transfer are critical in enhancing the performance of energy production, propulsion and biomedical systems. Examples include: hydraulic turbomachines, ship propellers, CO2-neutral e-fuels and e-motor cooling systems, particleladen flows in inhalers and focused ultrasounds for drug delivery. What all these cases have in common is the high level of complexity which makes Direct Numerical Simulations impossible. State-of-the-art LES simulations rely on simplified assumptions but do not have yet the desired accuracy, while often require enormously expensive CPU resources. The aim of project (acronym 'SCALE') is to develop simulation methods and reduced-order models using physics-informed and data-driven Machine Learning and optimisation methods for such flow processes. These will be trained against 'ground-truth' databases that will be generated for the first time using both DNS and experimentally validated, industry-relevant LES and multi-fidelity RANS simulations. The new simulation tools will be applied for the first time to industrial problems and their ability to accelerate design times and improve accuracy will be jointly pursued and evaluated with the non-academic partners of SCALE. These are international corporations and market leaders in the aforementioned areas. Holistic training by experts from science and industry includes broad reviews on relevant scientific topics, modern high performance computing architectures suitable for performing such simulations, big data analytics as well as extensive support for mastering scientific tasks and transferring the knowledge acquired to industrial practice. SCALE will also deliver transferable soft skills training from a well-connected cohort of leaders with the ability to communicate across disciplines and within the general public. This coupling of research with industry makes SCALE a truly outstanding network for doctoral candidates to start their careers.

Our goal is to create a world-class Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in fluid dynamics. The CDT will be a partnership between the Departments of Aeronautics, Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Science and Engineering, Mathematics, and Mechanical Engineering. The CDT's uniqueness stems from training students in a broad, cross-disciplinary range of areas, supporting three key pillars where Imperial is leading internationally and in the UK: aerodynamics, micro-flows, and fluid-surface interactions, with emphasis on multi-scale physics and on connections among them, allowing the students to understand the commonalities underlying disparate phenomena and to exploit them in their research on emerging and novel technologies. The CDT's training will integrate theoretical, experimental and computational approaches as well as mathematical and modelling skills and will engage with a wide range of industrial partners who will contribute to the training, the research and the outreach. A central aspect of the training will focus on the different phenomena and techniques across scales and their inter-relations. Aerodynamics and fluid dynamics are CDT priority areas classified as "Maintain" in the Shaping Capabilities landscape. They are of key importance to the UK economy (see 'Impact Summary in the Je-S form') and there currently is a high demand for, but a real dearth of, doctoral-level researchers with sufficient fundamental understanding of the multi-scale nature of fluid flows, and with numerical, experimental, and professional skills that can immediately be used within various industrial settings. Our CDT will address these urgent training needs through a broad exposure to the multi-faceted nature of the aerodynamics and fluid mechanics disciplines; formal training in research methodology; close interaction with industry; training in transferable skills; a tight management structure (with an external advisory board, and quality-assurance procedures based on a monitoring framework and performance indicators); and public engagement activities. The proposed CDT aligns perfectly with Imperial's research strategy and vision and has its full support. The CDT will leverage the research excellence of the 60 participating academics across Imperial, demonstrated by a high proportion of internationally-leading researchers (among whom are 15 FREng, and, 4 FRS), 5*-rated (RAE) departments, and a fluid dynamics research income of 93M pounds sinde 2008 (with about 32% from industry) including a number of EPSRC-funded Programme Grants in fluid dynamics (less than 4 or 5 in the UK) and a number of ERC Advanced Investigator Grants in fluid dynamics (less than about 7 across Europe). The CDT will also leverage our existing world-class training infra-structure, featuring numerous pre-doctoral training programmes, high-performance computing and laboratory facilities, fluid dynamic-specific seminar series, and our outstanding track-record in training doctoral students and in graduate employability. The Faculty of Engineering has also committed to the development of bespoke dedicated space which is important for cohort-building activities, and the establishment of a fluids network to strengthen inter-departmental collaborations for the benefit of the CDT.