Aimee Morgans' main research interests are:

- Thermoacoustic instability in future low carbon combustors.
- Aerodynamic drag of road vehicles
- Aerodynamic wind loading of high rise buildings.
- Aeroacoustics, acoustic damping, flow instability and feedback control of fluid flows in general.


PhD applications: Prof Morgans considers PhD applications from students with a good Masters degree from a top university. Exceptionally qualified candidates should consider applying for an Imperial Scholarship. Note that the deadline for these is very early, typically in the January before admission.

Internships: note that unfortunately Prof Morgans does not take internship students and cannot respond to enquiries on internships.

Modelling and control of thermoacoustic instability
Thermoacoustic instability, also known as combustion instability, is caused by a two-way coupling between acoustic waves and unsteady heat release. For example, unsteady heat release from a flame generates acoustic waves. These propagate within the combustor, reflect from boundaries and arrive back at the flame, where they generate more unsteady heat release. The cycle may repeat, leading to successively increasing amplitudes. Thermoacoustic instabilities are noisy and the resulting vibration can cause severe damage. They are a long-standing and serious problem for gas turbines, with low NOx combustors especially susceptible. With the current move towards low and zero carbon fuels, it is notable that hydrogen can significantly increase propensity to thermoacoustic instability. Our research is improving modelling, understanding and computational prediction of thermoacoustic instability. Our open source tool for simulating thermoacoustic instability, called OSCILOS (Open Source Combustion Instability Low Order Simulator), can be found at www.oscilos.com. We are also researching methods of suppressing instability using both active (feedback) and passive control.

Aerodynamic drag of road vehicles
At motorway/highway speeds, over half of the driving resistance of a road vehicle is caused by aerodynamic drag. For electric vehicles, reducing aerodynamic drag leads to an increase in range. The main source of aerodynamic drag is pressure drag, which arises due to the separation of the flow over the rear of the vehicle, forming a low pressure wake region. We are investigating the wake flows of blunt bluff bodies, such as road vehicles, and are particularly interested in wake asymmetries that occur. We are also investigating the use of feedback control to improve the pressure recovery, hence reducing the pressure drag. In practice, feedback control involves forcing actuators (such as slot jets or small flaps) located at the rear of the vehicle in response to pressure readings. This work is mainly computational, using Large Eddy Simulations.

Other Research
Reducing the unsteady loading of high rise buildings subjected to extreme winds
Aeroacoustics of holes, resonators and heat exchanger tubes
Computational aeroacoustics, including integral methods for rotor noise prediction and linearised solvers for confined flows.


Google scholar citations
http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=bh0cNEsAAAAJ