Following and initial one-year training course, ERBE CDT students pursue multi-disciplinary projects. Many PhD projects have immediate impact and are pursued in collaboration with stakeholder partners including national energy supply companies, building design and consultancy firms, construction companies and central government.

Flows in hypersonic intakes involve multiple shock and boundary layers interaction, reflections, expansions, formation of separation bubbles and transition to turbulent flows under high rates of heat transfer. Accurate numerical representation of such flows requires turbulence treatments beyond RANS, shock capturing methods, and high quality computational meshes for both shock representation and flow resolution in boundary layers. The project will build on the existing high-resolution, high performance, code developed at Loughborough University suitable for simulations of high speed/ hypersonic flows and will focus on developing an effective tool customised for high fidelity hypersonic intake simulations. This will involve the development and testing of effective mesh adaption and shock capturing techniques specific to this application. The current code operates on arbitrary polyhedral meshes with additional options for immersed boundaries and a preliminary h-and r- mesh refinements. After testing, the best performing turbulence treatment will be chosen from the existing capabilities of: LES with a dynamic subgrid model, Implicit LES option, or DES.

Aims and Research Questions Amid the current EdTech revolution, Extended Reality (XR) technology potentially represents a paradigm shift in the way humans interact with information. In varying degrees, it allows to digitally superimpose virtual images onto one's field of vision (Augmented Reality, or AR) - or fully digital immersion (Virtual Reality, or VR). Reality as we know it is thus poised to become a blend of physical and virtual objects. This has major implications for education, and in particular mathematical education, where visualisation of even complex concepts such as trigonometry plays a key role. The aim of this project, therefore, is to evaluate the facilitation of learning trigonometry using AR, VR and traditional paper-based resources pursuing the following Research Questions: Are there differences in mathematical performance outcomes between groups? If so, how are these linked to embodied experiences offered by the respective EdTech? Are there differences in attitudes towards learning between groups? If so, how are these linked to students' perceptions of access to/experiences of the concepts being learnt? Background and Context of this Research Within the rapidly growing corpus of research on XR in education, mathematics education studies highlight its association with improved performance outcomes, especially in secondary phases, as well as cognitive and affective gains for learners. If cognitive gains are linked to performance outcomes in mathematics, it seems that XR mediates these by providing enhanced, embodied experiences of the learning content. In fact, it was found that an AR environment allowing embodied interaction with the digitally augmented physical world had the strongest positive effects on 3D object manipulation. This aligns well with theoretical ideas on perception to action circuits and embodied cognition, which postulate that integration of bodily physical with visual information of the learning content, should improve cognitive representation and thus the accessibility of that content. Accordingly, the project will develop learning materials to mathematise a real-world, trigonometric problem: how sunlight varies with seasons. The learning materials will be designed to include incrementally scaffolded Earth-Sun models (in GeoGebra AR). Guidance levels and pace will be determined by instructors' formative assessment. They will progress from simple animations towards abstract geometric diagrams with auxiliary lines and labelled variables controlled by sliders This should facilitate the elusive algebraic reasoning ultimately needed to solve sunlight variation problems. Research Methods The project follows an experimental approach using a mixed-methods design and resource iteration in line with Design-Based Research paradigms to address the Research Questions in a three-stage procedure: Small-scale focus group on learning resources with mathematics teachers (to inform design tweaks) in which participants will be asked for feedback on Earth-Sun problems ranging from finding angles (single-step) to determining daylight hours (multi-step) in paper-pencil, but also AR and VR settings. Feedback will be sought on ease of problem visualisation, steps needed for optimal scaffolding, etc.. Intervention Study on Performances and attitudes in learning trigonometry with AR, VR and control group involving a pretest on prior knowledge of trigonometry and unscaffolded Earth-Sun problems followed by scaffolded instruction using worked examples. The post-test will involve worksheets from the pretest after using AR or VR applets as allocated as well as semi-structured interviews on perceptions, experiences, and affect during tasks; Impact Results of the project may pave the way for more widespread usage of XR in mathematics education providing a worked example ready for use in trigonometry lessons as more advanced curriculum content.

Accurate prediction of emissions, such as NOx or particulates, from combustion systems is a key tool to designing future engines. Accuracy of these simulations is limited by availability of detailed experimental data from inside realistic combustors and simulation techniques often present a compromise between fidelity and computational cost. Work at Loughborough University and other partners is aiming to enable detailed measurements of species, resolved in space and time, using gas spectroscopy techniques. This PhD will work alongside that project to simulate the combustor experimental set ups using CFD. The PhD will interact with the experimental work in two ways: 1) To understand and improve the gas spectroscopy method, Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of the experimental cases will be used to carry out numerical experiments. In these the expected outcome from spectroscopy measurements of known LES generated species concentration contours is calculated. This can then be used to understand errors in the data reconstruction process by comparing the processed 'synthetic spectroscopy' data with the original LES. Through this process the impact of factors such as reconstruction algorithm, spatial resolution and phenomena such as beam steering can be investigated. 2) Data from the experiments, and from existing emissions measurements techniques, can be used to validate simulations. This will be used in an attempt to identify sources of error and where limited computing resources can be best spent. For example if the mixing field and temperature field is shown to be simulated correctly then discrepancies in emissions can be attributed to the chemistry modelling. As part of this results from simulations using different methods (including some from related projects) will be compared. Baseline simulations using industry standard tabulated chemistry methods will be performed and compared with experimental data. It is intended that these will be compared with methods that allow for more detailed finite-rate chemistry but with lower spatial resolution such as reactor networks or methods such as Conditional Moment Closure.

To be confirmed - The first year of the CDT programme consists of 12 month MRes, which includes taught courses, mini projects, industrial courses and a PhD proposal dissertation MRes-The programme is designed to develop the following broad themes: Component (compressor, combustor, turbine) aerodynamics System-level design and component integration Methods (experimental and computational) for aerodynamic research and design Researcher skills Experience of university research groups and industry facilities