13th Australasian Natural Convection Workshop

Professors Steven Armfield and Chengwang Lei will jointly deliver a keynote honouring late Professor John Patterson's contributions to the field of natural convection.

Professor Steve Armfield investigates the fluid mechanics of a range of environmental and industrial flows using computational, theoretical and experimental approaches, leading to applications as diverse as improved river management and the design of more efficient building ventilation systems.

"My main focus is on the development of computational models and algorithms to allow the prediction of highly unsteady, buoyancy-driven and -dominated flows, such as the natural convection boundary layers that develop adjacent to vertical heated surfaces, the two-layer mixing flow that occurs when a lighter fluid passes over a denser fluid, and thermal fountains and plumes.

"Such flows occur in many environmental and industrial settings, such as in rivers, estuaries and atmospheric boundary layers, and in building heating, cooling and ventilation.

"My research has made a substantial contribution to the understanding of the mechanism of flow initiation and transition, and has led to improved computational models for these flows that will inform the development of river management strategies, large-scale fluid dynamics models and the design of heating, ventilation and cooling systems.

"I joined the academic staff of the University of Sydney in 1996, having previously completed my PhD here. I was Head of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering from 2008 till 2015. I have held academic positions at other Australian universities as well as research positions in Japan and the US."

Professors Steven Armfield and Chengwang Lei will jointly deliver a keynote honouring late Professor John Patterson's contributions to the field of natural convection.

Professor Chengwang Lei obtained his Bachelor and Master of Engineering degrees in Mechanical Engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China and PhD degree in Civil and Resource Engineering at The University of Western Australia. He joined the Environmental Fluids Group at The University of Sydney in 2009 after 10 years service in the School of Engineering at James Cook University, where he held a number of research and teaching positions across multiple disciplines.

Jimmy Philip is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Melbourne, Australia. He received his undergraduate and master's in India, both in Mechanical Engineering, and his PhD from the faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Subsequently, he was a post-doctoral researcher at LadHyX, Ecole Polytechnique, France and at the University of Melbourne. For about three years, he also worked as a Mechanical Engineer, being a member of the Edison Engineering Development Program at the Global Research Centre of the General Electric Company in India. His research interests are in turbulent flows, instability and pattern formation in fluid flows and experimental techniques in fluid mechanics, and, more recently, towards applications in environmental flows.