How does studying turbulence help us understand heat transfer?

Heat transfer is an important process found in a wide range of systems. The study of turbulence could help advance our understanding of heat management, as the two processes follow extremely similar principles. Improving our understanding of turbulence would impact everything from personal devices like laptops or phones all the way up to nuclear fusion reactors that power our cities.

The UK Turbulence Consortium is a group of nearly 80 academics and 100 researchers from across 30 UK institutions, committed to undertaking high quality, world leading turbulence simulation and scientific research. We use high performance computing systems to investigate fundamental aspects of turbulence problems using numerical simulations. Our goal is to find ways to manipulate turbulent flows to the benefit of society. In particular, we look at the impact of turbulence in the generation of renewable energy.