Research group leader: Dr. Paul Harris
Research staff: Dr. Roma Chakrabarti, Dr. David Henwood, Mr. Keith Parramore, and Dr. William Wilkinson.
Research students: Huan Wang
The Computational Mathematics Group is involved with a number of on-going research projects. The details of some of these are listed below.
The Boundary Element Method
Previous research has covered a variety of application areas, notably bubble dynamics. However current activity focuses on acoustics.
The group is currently working on the
modelling of the transient sound
field radiated by a loud-speaker cone as part of a long-standing collaboration
between the University of Brighton and B&W Loudspeakers Ltd. Prediction of the
sound field enables the design process to be simplified.
Calculated results
are compared to actual measurements obtained using a laser interferometer and
anechoic chamber at B&W. The animation shows the calculated pressure field
generated on the surface of the loudspeaker
cone by an axisymmetric oscillation of the cone.
The group is also collaborating with the University of Liverpool on precondtioners for iterative solution of boundary element equations.
Space Plasmas
The group's research interest in space plasmas focuses on the various aspects of collisionless shock waves; quasi-perpendicular and quasi-parallel shock structure; shock thermalization processes; particle dynamics at shocks; upstream and downstream wave phenomena; particle distributions and wave-particle interactions and co-rotating interaction regions in the solar wind. The work involves theoretical and computer simulation studies supported by some analysis of spacecraft measurements.
The supersonic solar wind is deflected past the Earth by a standing shock wave (pink in the picture). This picture is from the ESA/NASA SOHO spacecraft portfolio and is courtesy of NASA.
The plasma is heated as it passes through the shock. Phase space analysis allows the particle distribution to be determined. On the diagram, the dots show the calculated velocity distribution (white dots, one standard deviation; black dots, mode and two standard deviations), and the ellipses indicate a Gaussian approximation to the distribution. The diagram is taken from Ellacott and Wilkinson, 2003 (see publications below).
Recent PhDs / MPhils
Philip Newman 2012, D. Chappell 2007
H. Wang, Boundary integral modelling of transient wave propagation with application to acoustic radiation from loudspeakers, University of Brighton, 2004
