In 2020, applied mathematician and expert in fluid mechanics Dr Oyuna Rybdylova, Principal Lecturer, was awarded a prestigious Future Leaders Fellowship and received a grant of £1.1m.
The four-year project began in February 2021 and aims to develop and test a novel tool to simulate sprays for engineering applications. This new model will be validated using experimental data, and then applied to model pressurised-metered dose inhaler and fuel injection sprays. The developed models will be shared as libraries, compatible with a well-known and free, open source computational fluid dynamics software OpenFOAM.

Dr Rybdylova said about her goals with this project “It is an exciting challenge to develop a model
from a mathematical concept to a stage where it can be used for engineering practice. In order to achieve this goal, the original idea will need to be further developed to account for realistic phenomena that take place in a flow (for example, multicomponent liquids, liquid break up, turbulence), implement the model in a code, and test and validate the code using the experiments. On this journey, we will solve a series of non-trivial problems in mathematics, numerical methods, and engineering, including design of a new experimental methodology. The new experiments will focus on droplet spatial distribution as well as droplet size distribution.”
The Future Leaders Fellowship is a UK Research and Innovation programme, which is designed to establish the careers of world-class research and innovation leaders across the UK.”

The research team reflects the multifaceted nature of the project and includes co-investigator Dr Steven Begg (AEC), Visiting Researchers Professor François-Xavier Demoulin and Dr Jorge César Brändle de Motta from CORIA, Rouen Normandy University, Dr Ananth Pannala (PABS) and Ricardo UK Ltd.