graphic graphic


Super Models

It's a hard act to beat. The formation of a CFD laboratory in the South Wing of the Baker Building has already brought together activities previously pursued separately in the Aeronautics, Combustion and Turbomachinery groups. Wider exploitation of CAD-to-CFD and the use of these design and troubleshooting tools has led to an explosion of activity. One initial major success was the identification of the problem affecting turbulent flow in the combusters of gas-fired power stations, achieved in only three months. More recently Dr Cant in particular has turned his attention to computing the flow around shuttlecocks as part of the Sports Engineering Initiative.

This work is carried out in conjunction with the sports engineering group at CUED. The work aims to improve understanding of the flow around a shuttlecock in flight. the CFD provides excellent flow visualisation data which corresponds very well to complementary experimental smoke flow visualisation. Quantitative information enables optimisation of the skirt design to better replicate features of traditional shuttlecocks.

Image generated by Mike Frank.