2026- Hooke Research Fellow (Mathematics for the Environment), Oxford
2026- Non-Stipendiary ECRF, Hertford College, Oxford
2023-2026 EPSRC Fellow (National Fellowship in Fluid Dynamics), Bristol
2019-2023 PhD studentship, Bristol
2023-2026 EPSRC NFFDy fellowship (EP/X028011/1)
2024 UK Fluids Network annual thesis prize
2023 UKRI/Mitacs Globalink Placement (NE/X007197/1)
Crusted flows
When lava flows cool, they solidify at their surfaces, producing a crust which covers the flowing lava, insulating it from further cooling and providing resistance to flow. The crust is also disturbed by the flow and cracks in response to surface shear. I am developing mathematical and experimental approaches, in collaboration with volcanologists and experimentalists, to model these dynamics and predict crust coverage on active lava flows.
Image used courtesy of the USGS
Thermoviscous localisation
Magma and lava have strongly temperature-dependent viscosity. Cooling and thickening of magma as it erupts through a fissure can result in a feedback through which flow is focussed into hot fast-flowing channels. In this work I showed how fissure geometry interacts with this feedback mechanism, resulting in strong geometrical focussing of the flow.
Particles in viscoplastic fluids
When particles translate through viscoplastic fluids, they yield the fluid around them but leave fluid undisturbed in the far-field. The yield stress of the fluid also affects the drag on the particle. In this work I employed matched asymptotic methods to derive the correction to the drag force and the extent of yielded fluid around the particle when the yield stress is small compared to the viscous stresses.
Viscoplastic corner eddies
When viscous fluid in a corner is disturbed, it can develop an infinite sequence of viscously driven (Moffatt) eddies which decay in strength as the corner is approached. For a viscoplastic fluid this behaviour is suppressed by the yield stress, resulting in unyielded material which clogs the corner. In this work I employed numerical computations and boundary layer theory to explore the dependence of clog size and eddy rotation speed as a function of strength of the yield stress.
Paebbl is an industrial resilience company making the built environment more future-proof by converting CO₂ into carbon-negative building materials. I was part of a KE Hub funded knowledge-exchange project, working with Paebbl to develop mathematical models of particle suspensions in pipes.
Team: Philip Pearce (UCL), Jake Bowhay (Bristol), Kieran Quaine (Paebbl)