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Staff Profile

Dr Umair Ahmed

Senior Lecturer in Computational Fluid Dynamics and Thermofluids

  • Email: umair.ahmed@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: 0191 208 3625
  • Address: School of Engineering,
    Room 4.029, 4th Floor,
    Stephenson Building,
    Newcastle University,
    Newcastle upon Tyne,
    NE1 7RU
Background

Dr Umair Ahmed obtained his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering with 1st class Hons and the best overall performance award from the University of Manchester in 2010, which was followed by a PhD in mechanical engineering with an emphasis on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and computational combustion at the University of Manchester in 2014. He joined Newcastle University as a Lecturer in 2019, prior to this he has worked as a Research Associate at Newcastle University (2017-2019) and as a Research Associate and Teaching Fellow at the University of Manchester (2013-2017). 

Dr Ahmed's research interests include Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), with a focus on turbulence, heat transfer, computational combustion, multiphase flows and non-Newtonian fluid flows. As part of his research he has been involved in several projects which range from Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of full scale rotating marine turbines, modelling of non-Newtonian fluids in industrial scale mixers, Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulation of premixed turbulent combustion to Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of turbulence and combustion in free shear and wall bounded flows. Furthermore, he has also been involved in developing mathematical models for turbulence and combustion under the RANS and LES frameworks.

Areas of expertise

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of turbulence, scalar mixing, heat transfer and combustion
  • Modelling and simulation of turbulence, scalar mixing, heat transfer and combustion under Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) frameworks
  • Heat transfer modelling
  • Numerical modelling of Non-Newtonian fluid flows


Memberships

  • Member of the Combustion Institute (British Section)
  • Member of UK Turbulence Consortium
  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
  • Member of the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR)
  • Member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Peer Review College


Awards

  • 23rd Harold Jan Schoemaker Award (2023) from the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR) for the most outstanding paper published in the Journal of Hydraulic Research between 2020 and 2022.
  • Awarded prize for the best presentation and the use of audio/visual aids in the UK Consortium on Turbulent Reacting flows (UKCTRF) annual meeting (2018).
  • Nominated and shortlisted for the award of “Best Postgraduate Teacher” by the students’ union at the University of Manchester (2013).
  • Best Overall Performance Award for Undergraduate Degree in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Manchester (2010).



Roles and Responsibilities

  • Stage-4 year tutor for MEng in Mechanical Engineering (2023-Present).
  • PGR Selector for Fluid Dynamics and Thermal Systems Group (2023-Present).
  • Academic IT lead for the Stephenson Operational Group (new Stephenson building) (2023).
  • Represent Newcastle University on the N8 Centre of Excellence in Computationally Intensive Research (N8 CIR) Steering Group (2022-Present).
  • Member of the School of Engineering Online Facilitation Group (OFG) to facilitate online teaching of engineering (2020-2021).
  • Steering Group member for the High Performance Computing (HPC) facility (ROCKET) at Newcastle University (2019-Present).
  • Member of the NSS action plan committee for Mechanical Engineering (2019-2020).
Research

Research Areas

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).
  • Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of turbulence, scalar mixing, heat transfer and combustion.
  • Modelling and simulation of turbulence, scalar mixing, heat transfer and combustion under Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) frameworks.
  • Heat transfer modelling.
  • Numerical modelling of Non-Newtonian fluid flows.
  • Developing new algorithms and open source CFD software for high performance computing (HPC) platforms.


Current Research Projects

Flame-wall interaction within turbulent boundary layers: Performing high-fidelity Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) for premixed flames interacting with inert walls under fully developed turbulent boundary layer conditions. The data is then used to develop modelling strategies for simulating flows of industrial relevance using the RANS and LES frameworks.

Response of hydrogen flames to thermoacoustic excitation: Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) calculations carried out for the response of hydrogen flames under different strain rate and thermoacoustic excitation levels. The results from this research are important from the point of view of developing stable gas turbine engines, which use hydrogen as a fuel, for power generation and aerospace industries.

Algorithms for Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR): Developing high-order/high-resolution algorithms for unstructured AMR techniques which can be used for simulating reacting flows, multi-phase flows and high-speed flows including supersonic and hypersonic flows.


Grants and Fellowships

2024: EPSRC research grant EP/Y017951/1 : Investigation of the influence of extinction strain rates and heat release rate on the stability of swirl stabilised hydrogen premixed flames (PI)

2023: EPSRC ARCHER2 pioneer project: Computational investigation of hydrogen-air premixed swirl flames (PI)

2021: EPSRC Access to High-Performance Computing: Modelling and Simulation of multi-physics reacting jet flows (PI)

2020: EPSRC ARCHER2 pioneer project: Flame-wall interaction of high hydrogen content premixed flames within turbulent boundary layers (PI)

2020: EPSRC research grant EP/V003534/1: A combined experimental and numerical investigation of premixed flame-wall interaction in turbulent boundary layers (Co-I)

2018: Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science short term fellowship: Collaborative research at Kyoto University on flame-wall interaction of hydrogen combustion (PI)

2010: The University of Manchester: Overseas Research Studentship (ORS) award for PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics and Computational Combustion.

Teaching

Current Teaching:

  • MEC8062: Turbulent Fluid Flow and Modelling (2023-Present)
  • MEC8099: Mechanical Engineering Team Project (module leader) (2023-Present)
  • MEC3032: Advanced Thermofluid Dynamics (module leader) (2022-Present)
  • MEC3098: Mechanical Engineering Project (2019-Present)
  • MEC8095: MSc Project (2019-Present)

Previous Teaching:

  • MEC3028: Computational Heat & Fluid Flow (module leader) (2020-2023)
  • MEC8043: Software in the Professional Engineering Context (2019-2020)
Publications