Rich Kerswell

DAMTP
Centre for Mathematical Sciences
University of Cambridge
Wilberforce Rd
Cambridge CB3 0WA, U.K.

R.R.Kerswell@damtp.cam.ac.uk

Tel: +44-1223-766349

Research Interests

The Navier-Stokes equations (nonlinear dynamics, transition and turbulence)
Geophysical and astrophysical fluid mechanics (e.g. convecting and stably-stratified flows,
tidal, precessional and librational motion of planetary interiors and subsurface oceans, accretion disks)
Viscoelastic flows (elasto-inertial and elastic turbulence)
Machine learning in fluid mechanics

Recent Meetings

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution GFD summer school: `Shear Turbulence: Onset and Structure' 20 June - 26 August 2011, Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
( Principal lectures: 1. Transition scenarios; 2. Edge tracking; 3. Triggering turbulence efficiently (now updated in Rep. Prog. Phys. 77 , 085901, 2014); 4. Turbulence: transient or sustained? ) (hard at work).
NORDITA 'Stability and Transition' 6-31 May 2013, Stockholm.
The 14th European Turbulence Conference (ETC14) 1-4 September 2013, ENS Lyon.
SIAM Conference 'Nonlinear Waves and Coherent Structures' 11-14 August 2014, Cambridge.
Institute for Pure & Applied Mathematics (IPAM) 'Mathematics of Turbulence' 8 September-12 December 2014, Los Angeles.
11th ERCOFTAC SIG 33 Workshop 'Progress in Transition Modelling and Control' 15-17 April 2015, St Helier, Jersey.
'Challenges in Nonlinear Systems' 10-11 September 2015, Manchester.
American Physical Society 68th Annual DFD meeting , 22-24 November 2015, Boston.
Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics 'Recurrent Flows: The Clockwork Behind Turbulence' , Jan 3-Feb 10 2017, UC Santa Barbara
Euromech Colloquium 'Coherent Structures in Wall-bounded Turbulence: New Directions in a Classic Problem', Aug 29-31 2018, Imperial College, London.
CISM-ECCOMAS Summer school on 'Coherent Structures in Unsteady Flows: Mathematical and Computational Methods' June 3-7 2019, Udine, Italy
( Draft lectures on Exact Coherent Structures: 1. Theory & Methods; 2. Importance & Identification; 3. Variational Methods )
WITGAF 2019 'Waves, Instabilities and Turbulence in Geophysical and Astrophysical Flows' July 8-19 2019, Institut d'Etudes Scientifiques de Cargese, Corsica.
EPSRC UK Fluid Network Summer School 'Modal Decompositions in Fluid Mechanics', Aug 5-8 2019, DAMTP, Cambridge.
8th European Congress of Mathematics "Partial differential equations describing far-from-equilibrium open systems'', minisymposium webinar, Sept 21-24, 2020.
Institute for Pure & Applied Mathematics (IPAM) ``Transport and Mixing in Complex and Turbulent Flows'', Jan 11-15, 2021, Los Angeles.
Isaac Newton Institute ``Mathematical Aspects of Turbulence: Where Do We Stand?'', Jan 4-June 24, 2022, Cambridge, UK.
See workshop 4 ``Wall-bounded turbulence: beyond current boundaries'', March 28-April 1, 2022.

Papers:

Archive (selected):
Kerswell, R.R. ``The instability of precessing flow'' Geophys. Astrophys. Fluid Dynam. 72, 107-144, 1993.
Kerswell, R.R. ``Tidal excitation of hydromagnetic waves and their damping in the Earth'' J. Fluid Mech. 274, 219-241, 1994.
Kerswell, R.R. ``Secondary instabilities in rapidly rotating flows: inertial wave breakdown'' J. Fluid Mech. 382, 283--306, 1999.
Kerswell, R.R. ``Upper bounds on general dissipation functionals in turbulent shear flows: revisiting the `efficiency' functional'' J. Fluid Mech. 461, 239-275, 2002.
Wedin, H. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Exact coherent structures in pipe flow: travelling wave solutions'' (colour version) J. Fluid Mech. 508, 333-371, 2004.
Pringle, C.C.T., Duguet, Y. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Highly symmetric travelling waves in pipe flow''(colour version) Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A 367, 457-472, 2009 (TW videos).
Pringle, C.C.T. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Using nonlinear transient growth to construct the minimal seed for shear flow turbulence'' Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 154502, 2010.
Chandler, G.J. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Simple invariant solutions embedded in 2D Kolmogorov turbulence'' J. Fluid Mech. 722, 554-595, 2013.
Kerswell, R.R. ``Nonlinear nonmodal stability theory'' Ann. Rev. Fluid Mech. 50, 319-345, 2018.
Page, J., Dubief, Y. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Exact travelling wave solutions in viscoelastic channel flow'' Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 154501, 2020.
Page, J., Brenner, M.P. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Revealing the state space of turbulence using machine learning'' hys. Rev. Fluids 6, 034402, 2021.

Recent:
Zolfaghari, H., Kerswell, R.R., Obrist, D. & Schmid, P.J. ``Sensitivity and downstream influence of the impinging leading edge vortex instability in a bileaflet mechanical heart valve'' J. Fluid Mech. 936 , A41, 2022.
Wen, B., Ding, Z., Chini, G.P. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Heat transport in Rayleigh-Benard convection with linear marginality'' Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A380 20210039, 2022.
Buza, G., Page, J. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Weakly nonlinear analysis of viscoelastic instability in channel flow for finite and vanishing Reynolds number'' J. Fluid Mech. 940, A11, 2022.
Dubief, Y., Page, J., Kerswell, R.R., Terrapon, V.E. & Steinberg, V. ``A first coherent structure in elasto-inertial turbulence'' Phys. Rev. Fluids 7, 073301, 2022.
Buza, G., Beneitez, M., Page, J. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Finite-amplitude elastic waves in viscoelastic channel flow from large to zero Reynolds number" J. Fluid Mech. 951, A3, 2022.
Markeviciute, V.K. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Improved assessment of the statistical stability of turbulent flows using extended Orr-Sommerfeld stability analysis'' J. Fluid Mech. 955, A1, 2023.
Nivarti, G.V., Kerswell, R.R., Marston, J.B & Tobias, S.M. ``Non-equivalence of quasilinear dynamical systems and their statistical closures''
Markeviciute, V.K. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Threshold transient growth as a criterion for turbulent mean profiles''
Beneitez, M., Page, J. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Linear instability leading to elastic turbulence in plane Couette flow''
Page, J., Norgaard, P., Brenner, M. P. & Kerswell, R. R. ``Recurrent flow patterns as a basis for turbulence: predicting statistics from structures''

Postdocs:

Ashley Willis, EPSRC-funded 2005-2008 (now Senior Lecturer at Sheffield University)
Yohann Duguet, Marie-Curie Fellow 2006-2008 (now CNRS, LIMSI, Paris)
Laurent Lacaze, Marie-Curie Fellow 2006-2008 (now CNRS, IMFT, Toulouse)
Mark Woodhouse, Renishaw & North Bristol NHS Trust funded 2007-2009 (now NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow, Bristol University)
Gary Chandler, EPSRC-funded 2010-2011 (now Motorsport engineering)
Dan Lucas, EPSRC-funded 2012-2013 (now Lecturer at St Andrews University)
Colin Leclercq, EPSRC-funded 2014-2016 (now Ingenieur de Recherche, ONERA, Meudon)
Jacob Page, EPSRC-funded 2016-2018 (now Lecturer in Applied Mathematics, Edinburgh University)
Jake Langham, EPSRC Doctoral Prize 2017-2019 (now a postdoc with Prof Andrew Hogg at Bristol)
Zijing Ding, EPSRC-funded 2017-2020 (now Professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology, China) (genius)
Hadi Zolfaghari SNSF-funded & Marie-Curie Fellow 2020-2023
Miles Couchman DAMTP-funded (with C.P. Caulfield) 2020-2022
Lu Zhu ERC-funded (with P.F. Linden) 2021-2023
Miguel Beneitez, EPSRC-funded (with J. Page, Edinburgh) 2021-2024
Anagha Madhusudanan, INI-Simons Fellow Jan-Dec 2022 (now a 5-year INSPIRE fellow in Bengaluru)

Graduate students:

Darren Mason 1995-1999 (now software engineering).
Denise Cooper (née Barnes) 1996-2000 (now senior software engineer at Radan Computational Ltd, Bath, in CAD).
Robert Mason 1998-2001 (now Serco Assurance, Dorchester, in scientific consultancy).
Stephen Plasting 2000-2004 (followed by a postdoc at Scripps Oceanographic Institute, San Diego with W.R. Young; now finance).
Hakan Wedin 2001-2004 (followed by postdocs at Kyoto University with M. Nagata and now Genoa University with A. Bottaro).
Chris Pringle 2005-2009 (followed by postdocs at Reading and Nottingham Universities, now Senior Lecturer at Coventry University).
Helen Sweeney 2008-2011 (followed by training with Teach First).
Samuel Rabin 2009-2013, co-supervised with C. Caulfield (now finance).
Matthew Chantry 2010-2014 (followed by postdocs in Paris and Oxford, now at ECMWF).
Daniel Olvera 2012-2016 (followed by a postdoc with Chris Pringle at Coventry University).
Jeremy Parker 2017-2020, co-supervised with C. Caulfield (followed by a postdoc with T. Schneider at EPFL from Nov 2020).
Vilda Markeviciute 2018-2022 (EPSRC, now at Expedia)
Will Oxley 2020- (EPSRC).
Gergely Buza 2020- (Harding Fellow).
Joe Holey 2020- (CMI) co-supervised with J. Page.
Ira Shokar 2021- (AI4ER), co-supervised with P. Haynes.
Rami Cassia 2021- (CMI).
Theo Lewy 2022- (Trust Fellow).