This is network proposal that gathers all the national expertise in rotary wing systems: The Vertical Lift Network (VLN). The network addresses technical problems for a special class of vehicles powered by direct lift: conventional helicopters, compound helicopters, tilt-rotors, fan-in-wing vehicles, unmanned air vehicles powered by rotors. It is recognised that no single academic institution has expertise and test facilities to take on these new challenges. Several initiatives in Europe (CleanSky, Horizon 2020, national research programmes in Germany, France, Italy, The Netherlands), the USA (NASA, Boeing, Sikorsky), Russia (TSAGI, MAI, KAI) and possibly also China (CARDC) could undermine the competiveness of the UK. Countries such as Japan (JAXA), Korea (KARI) are also gaining momentum. The proposal brings together expertise across the full spectrum of aerospace engineering, including aerodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, wind tunnel testing, aeroelasticity, aeroacoustics, materials, control systems, power systems, flight dynamics, handling qualities, and systems engineering. Due to this multi-disciplinarity, leading-edge research initiatives can only be addressed by pooling resources together to create critical mass. No single organisation has the know-how to address the upcoming technology challenges. The academic network is to work closely with the industry and government stakeholders to identify the strategic directions of research in the next decade. Other key objectives include the promotion of scientific collaboration, the identification of the funding sources, training of students and scientific dissemination via an annual workshop.

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 aerospace sector, in its ongoing quest to improve aircraft efficiencies, is considering more flexible and finely tuned aero-structural systems. One such approach is to increase the aspect ratio (AR) of the wings, i.e. increase the span such that the wings are more slender. Such higher aspect ratio wings offer the prospect of improved aerodynamic efficiency for civil and military transport aircraft and for certain types of unmanned aircraft, such as those used for high-altitude long-endurance sensing, environmental monitoring, etc. High AR wings are typically more flexible than conventional designs in order to minimise structural mass. This in turn can increase the complexity of the dynamic responses of the wings themselves and the aircraft as a whole. These responses comprise different modes of motion, associated with airframe aeroelasticity (which refers to the interaction between airframe aerodynamic, structural and inertial properties) and with the so-called 'rigid-body' motions (representing the behaviour of the air vehicle independent of any elastic/flexibility effects) and flight control modes. In design and analysis of conventional (more rigid) aircraft, the aeroelastic modes are typically at higher frequencies than the flight dynamics and control modes and are usually able to be well modeled using linear methods; in such air vehicles the extent and complexity of any coupling with the flight dynamics behaviour is low. However, the more flexible the airframe, the stronger the likely interaction (coupling) between all these modes. Furthermore, the influence of nonlinearity increases - in particular geometric nonlinearity in high AR wings, along with other potential nonlinear characteristics such as in the aerodynamics and control system. Methods for numerical modeling of highly flexible aircraft, incorporating the necessary coupling and nonlinear phenomena, have been extensively researched and developed in recent years. Validating or calibrating these predictive methods via controlled experiments is, however, a challenge - usually addressed by testing a wing as a cantilever supported rigidly at its root in a wind tunnel. There is very limited scope in existing test rigs for extending the experimental approaches to accommodate the degrees of freedom needed to capture the coupling between the flight dynamics and control modes and the aeroelastic modes. Such rigs that do exist are usually intended for limited motion amplitudes in order to test for onset of aeroelastic instability, rather than being aimed at large-amplitude wing bending, torsion and model motions to exploit or explore nonlinearity. This proposal introduces a new experimental concept that allows this coupled behaviour to be investigated in a controlled wind tunnel environment. It entails a challenging extension to the current testing approach for the University of Bristol's novel 5-degree-of-freedom dynamic test rig and the design of suitable flexible actuated and instrumented models. The procedure will build on previous rigid-body test accomplishments and will extend earlier work on active rig control to ensure that coupled dynamic phenomena seen in the wind tunnel match those of free flight as closely as possible. A successful outcome of this exploratory research could launch the development of this new test technique towards implementation in industrial wind tunnels. It will also assess the feasibility of extending the capability to incorporate load alleviation control in the flexible wings. Furthermore, it will generate enhanced types of data to evaluate the predictive ability of nonlinear computational modelling techniques and to adapt or calibrate them to measured behaviours. In this way, the proposed research offers the prospect of substantially improved wind tunnel capability to support design and analysis of future advanced aircraft wings/airframes featuring complex dynamic interactions.

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.