Modelling Urban Air Pollution in the Lab
Supervisors – Dr Christina Vanderwel, Prof John Shrimpton, Dr Zheng-Tong Xie
Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics
I am an aerospace engineering graduate, my bachelors degree is in pure aerospace engineering and my masters degree is in computational aerodynamics. To me the most fascinating aspect of aerospace is in the complexity of turbulence at various scales. I also firmly believe that making cities more sustainable in the future is important so I am excited by the prospect of studying aerospace with sustainability as a goal.
Project funding by UKRI (UK Research and Innovation), Personal studentship funding by the University of Southampton.
Project details:
Modelling dispersion of pollutants through a city using a new water tunnel at the University of Southampton. Initial tests will be conducted using a scaled model of the city of Southampton, with an interest in comparison with recently conducted Large Eddy Simulations of the atmospheric boundary layer. Measurements will be made using both Particle Image Velocimetry, and Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence. Once the water tunnel experiments have been conducted, it is possible that data from them could be used to validate, or fine tune atmospheric dispersion models for more accurate simulations in the future.