In addition to research with direct applications to industrial, biological or environmental problems, applied mathematicians within the School of Mathematics also work on a range of fundamental problems in continuum mechanics. These areas of research include:

Electrohydrodynamics: electric field effects on inviscid waves, and viscous film flow over topography. (Dr M G Blyth, Dr P W Hammerton, Dr E Parau)

Interfacial and free surface flows: Marangoni effects; flow past obstacles; spiralling liquid jets; water waves. (Dr M G Blyth, Dr M J Cooker, Dr E Parau)

Oscillating viscous flows: oscillating stagnation-point flows; time-averaged or acoustic streaming, with application to containerless processing in a low gravity environment; instability of flow through an elastic-walled tube. (Dr M G Blyth, Dr P W Hammerton, Prof N Riley, Dr Robert Whittaker)

Mathematical modelling of an instability of fast flow through an elastic-walled tube under high axial tension. The images show the extreme wall positions for the first and second normal modes. (Whittaker et. al., 2010)

Splashes and droplet impact: small-time behaviour, air-cushioning; three-dimensional impacts; influence on aircraft icing. (Dr R Purvis)

Superfluids and Bose-Einstein condensates : non-linear waves, nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, vortex dynamics. (Dr H Salman)

Mechanics of Solids: research focuses on aspects of elastic wave propagation in crystalline media and constrained and nearly-constrained elastic, thermoelastic and viscoelastic solids, including energy propagation, surface waves, plate waves, and wave hierarchies in thermoelasticity.  Also studied are materials with negative Poisson's ratio and incremental elastic moduli in finite elasticity. (Dr N H Scott)