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 & optimisation in fluid mechanics

Interested in a PhD with me?

here

Lecture notes

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).
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 )

Recent Meetings

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.
International Congress on Rheology (ICR) July 31-4 August 2023, Athens, Greece.
Geophysical & Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics Experiments and Models (GAFDEM) 11-15 September 2023, Nice, France.
American Physical Society 76th Annual DFD meeting (focus session on `Chaotic Flows in Polymer Solutions'), 19-21 November 2023, Washington DC, USA.
Mathematical Aspects of Geophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics (AMS80), Jan 11-12, 2024, Newcastle, UK.

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'' Phys. 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.
Beneitez, M., Page, J. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Polymeric diffusive instability leading to elastic turbulence in plane Couette flow'' Phys. Rev. Fluids 8, L101901, 2023.
Zhu, L., Atoufi, A., Lefauve, A., Taylor, J.R., Kerswell, R.R., Dalziel, S., Lawrence, G. & Linden, P.F. ``Stratified inclined duct: direct numerical simulations" J. Fluid Mech. 969, A20, 2023.
Zolfaghari, H., Andiapen, M., Baumbach, A., Mathur, A. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Wall shear stress and pressure patterns in aortic stenosis patients with and without aortic dilation captured by high-performance image-based computational fluid dynamics'' PLOS Computational Biology, 19, e1011479, 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''
Page, J., Norgaard, P., Brenner, M. P. & Kerswell, R. R. ``Recurrent flow patterns as a basis for turbulence: predicting statistics from structures''
Beneitez, M., Page, J., Dubief, Y. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Multistability of elasto-inertial two-dimensional channel flow''
Couchman, M.M.P., Beneitez, M., Page, J. & Kerswell, R.R. ``Inertial enhancement of the polymer diffusive instability"
Page, J., Holey, J., Brenner, M. P. & Kerswell, R. R. ``Exact coherent structures in two-dimensional turbulence identified with convolutional autoencoders''
Zhu, L., Jiang, X. , Lefauve, A., Kerswell, R.R. & Linden, P.F. ``Physics-informed neural network to augment experimental data: an application to stratified flows"
Shokar, I.J.S., Kerswell, R.R. and Haynes, P.H. ``Stochastic latent transformer: efficient modelling of stochastically forced zonal jets''
Lewy, T. and Kerswell, R.R. ``The polymer diffusive instability in highly concentrated polymeric fluids''

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 (now Assistant Professor at York University, Canada)
Lu Zhu ERC-funded (with P.F. Linden) 2021-2023 and 2023-2024 (DAMTP-funded)
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)
Dario Klingenberg , DAAD Scholar (German Academic Exchange) Sept 2023-Feb 2025

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).