J. Mike R. Graham MA, PhD, FREng, FRAeS, FRINA   Emeritus Professor of Unsteady Aerodynamics Department of Aeronautics Imperial College London

As a special event of the workshop, we are pleased to invite you to a banquet in honour of Professors Peter Bearman and Mike Graham. Download Leweke's presentation about Peter and Mike in BBVIV. [PDF]

Biography

Michael Graham graduated with a Maths degree from Cambridge University (1963) and then took one year of the Part II Engineering course (1964) following which his PhD research (at Imperial College, 1967) was a largely experimental investigation into turbulent boundary layers generated by artificial transition.  However the majority of his subsequent research career has been spent studying other forms of unsteady flow. Initially, during a post-doctoral period at Cambridge University, the work was mainly concerned with the forces on aerofoils and wings buffeted by turbulence. The intended application was to aircraft flying through turbulence but the work led to a number of other applications including buffeting of suspension bridges, aero-acoustic problems and more fundamentally to the structure of turbulence adjacent to a wall.

A few years later, working with Peter Bearman, a strong research group was set up in the Aeronautics Department at Imperial College as part of the London Centre for Marine Technology, to study the fluid loading induced by incident waves on North Sea Oil and Gas platforms. This research group has continued to the present time and has broadened into many studies within the general area of marine hydrodynamics, notably the prediction of vortex induced damping of floating hulls and the vortex-induced-vibration of marine risers.   Much of this work has involved numerical simulation of the wakes of bluff bodies leading to the development with Richard Willden of the computer code VIVIC which uses a vortex-in-cell approach to solve the unsteady flow Navier-Stokes equations on a long flexible cylinder on a strip theory basis.

Mike Graham’s other major area of research over the last twenty years has been the steady and unsteady flow problems which arise in the aerodynamics of horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) rotors. These mainly relate to what is variously referred to as three-dimensional or delayed rotor stall and to interactions between the rotor and incident turbulence including wakes or more direct interference with fixed structures. They have also expanded into studies of tidal stream turbines and wave energy. Many of these projects have been collaborative with other European research groups and have been conducted by numerical simulation, wind tunnel experiments and measurement on wind turbines in the field. The research includes several studies of the viability of running wind turbines in conjunction with buildings which is also associated with his on-going interest in building aerodynamics.

Mike Graham was Managing Agent of the EPSRC Directed Programme Marine CFD (96-99), Technical Area Coordinator for Marine CFD for Offshore Structures (02-03) in the EC thematic network MARNET, coordinator of the EC Joule project ROTOW on wind turbine rotor / tower interaction. He was on the editorial board of the Journal of Fluids and Structures from its inception until he retired in 2007 and is chairman of the editorial board of the Aeronautical Journal. He succeeded Professor Peter Bearman as Head of the Department of Aeronautics from 1999-2003.

Research interests

Environmental Flows
Computational Fluid Dynamics
Marine Technology

Membership of Professional Bodies
Royal Academy of Engineering, Fellow

Royal Aeronautical Society, Fellow

Royal Institution of Naval Architects, Fellow

Publications

See a list of Mike's publications (external page).