NWTF

Started

Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research
Energy Efficiency(Transport)

Equipment

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Professor JF Morrison
Aeronautics
Imperial College London

Standard

EPSRC

31 December 2024

01 July 2026

18 months

£330,000

Unknown

London

NC : Infrastructure

Professor JF Morrison, Aeronautics, Imperial College London

NWTF (http://www.nwtf.ac.uk/) is a UK leader and, over the next five years, will become a global leader in delivering cutting-edge science across a networked range of unique facilities in experimental fluid mechanics addressing the grand challenges of clean growth and the future of mobility across aerospace, automotive and civil engineering sectors. Through efficient and nimble organisation, it will provide strategic, coordinated oversight with an industrially aligned approach in the generation of new, net-zero technologies and knowledge in the efficiency of fluid-based systems, H2 and electric/hybrid transport, fluid-structure interaction, heating, noise, contaminant dispersion, particle transmission (Covid-19) and human factors, wind loading, coastal erosion and offshore renewables. NWTF continues to provide cutting-edge research, with its capacity measured by outputs and will augment this delta in terms of new science, research capacity and pace. It enables the development of new skills in original, challenging, highly relevant experiments, the provision of new data and the establishment of digital threads for AI, modelling and the rapid adoption of innovative techniques such as remote access and robotics. With an inclusive approach, NWTF provides interconnected facilities of world-class capability that are open to all UK-based researchers. In this way, NWTF provides a unified approach that is greater than the sum of its individual facilities, offering a single point of contact for industry, driving an innovation pipeline for a pull-through environment. NWTF is a hub and node organisation with 22 wind tunnels across 12 UK universities (nodes) and a centralised Project Manager (hub) who coordinates initiatives on behalf of the group. It has a Management Board (MB) comprising one member from each institution along with the NWTF hub Project Manager and representatives from EPSRC and the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI). It meets quarterly, receiving inputs from a cross-disciplinary, international Advisory Board (AB) which meets bi-annually with members from Japan, France, Germany, Sweden and the United States. The AB consists mostly of experimental aerodynamicists from industry as well as academic colleagues, including those with interests in numerical prediction. With an initial EPSRC grant, EP/L024888/1 in 2014, NWTF solved the problem of under-investment in UK wind tunnels by establishing an equitable, excellence-based framework for tunnel membership. This successful model has recently attracted further investment from UKRI Infrastructure Award with a strong focus on green economic growth and human mobility, announced June 19, 2023, and administered via seven EPSRC awards with a start date July 1, 2024. This funding supports eleven new facilities at seven universities, transformational equipment at six additional universities and additional hub support. Network activities are supported by a Network grant, EP/X012069/1. The most recent UKRI Infrastructure award evolved from an EPSRC "Large Scale Research Infrastructure" process during which NWTF was asked to focus on transformational elements only, reducing the requested budget from 48.2m to 23.0m. The reduced value resubmission therefore removed all support for replacement items such as new lasers or operating system upgrades. The Core Equipment grant will fund these critical items to keep NWTF facilities operational by investing to save and enhancing the capability of these world-class wind tunnels.

16/07/25