TheWhittle Laboratory[1] works on reducing the climate impact of aircraft and power generation. It is located at theWest Cambridge site inCambridge, UK. It is a part of the Department of Engineering, at theUniversity of Cambridge. The Whittle Lab has its origins in SirFrank Whittle and a number of his original team, from Cambridge, and who in 1937 invented thejet engine.[2] In opening the Lab in 1973 the aim was to develop the technology which would underpin the emerging age of mass air travel. The Whittle Laboratory today is one of the world's leading jet engine and power generation research laboratories.[3] It has partnered withRolls-Royce,Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, andSiemens for over 50 years; withDyson for 10 years;[4] and in the last few years with many of the new entrants into the aviation sector. The Whittle Laboratory has successfully translated hundreds of primary research ideas into industrial products and its research has been awarded theAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers highest honour, the ‘Gas Turbine Award’ 15 times, more than any other institution or company.[5] The current focus of the Laboratory is to accelerate thedecarbonisation of flight[6] and energy.
The Whittle Laboratory was initially set-up with a grant from theScience Research Council by SirJohn Horlock who was to become the first director of the lab, and SirWilliam Hawthorne who was the head of the Cambridge University Engineering Department and who had developed thecombustion chamber in Sir Frank Whittle jet engine used in thefirst British jet aircraft.
Professor John Denton[7] was one of the first to developnumerical methods for flow calculation in turbomachines using time-marching methods. He was soon joined by Prof Bill Dawes[8] and together the numerical methods that he has developed, including TBLOCK and MULTALL,[9] became widely used around the world receiving many international awards for his work. The advent ofCFD was groundbreaking not only because for the first time researchers and designers could calculate the correctloss mechanisms within turbomachines (rather than relying onempiricalcorrelations), but also because the numerical methods could also be used as design tools to improve component efficiencies. The Denton code TBLOCK, aCPU basedNavier-Stokes solver for turbomachinery, has since been converted to a code called Turbostream[10] designed to exploitNVIDIAGPUs for massivelyparallel computations, resulting in a more than 20 times speed up for the same calculation. Turbostream was spun out as a separate company, with the latest version (TS4) now anunstructured code withmulti-physics capabilities.[11]
Other computational methods developed in the Lab include 3DNS,[12] ahigh fidelity flow solver, and dbslice,[13] aJavaScript library for web-based data exploration.
The Whittle Lab is home to a number of experimental facilities used to study thermofluid mechanics in turbomachinery, propulsion, power and aviation.[14] These include:
There are also many smaller rigs used for teaching, probe calibration,real gas dynamics,wind andtidal turbine studies,heat transfer measurement, propulsor performance testing and many other applications. There are manufacturing facilities including3D printing andCNC machining to support experimental work.
Since its origin the Whittle Laboratory primary aim has been to build a bridge across ‘the Valley of Death’ – the place where brilliant primary research is not translated into product.[15] The research partnerships with Rolls-Royce, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Siemens have stretched back more than 50 years.[4] More recently the Whittle Laboratory has partnered with Dyson,Reaction Engines,Lilium and Green Jets.[16] The Lab has also partnered withBritish Cycling and theECB on sports aerodynamics incycling andcricket.
By radically changing both the culture and tools used in technology development, the New Whittle Laboratory[17] is intended to enable research to dramatically cut the time required to achievenet zero flight. Recent pioneering trials at the Whittle Laboratory in collaboration with Rolls-Royce, and funded by the Aerospace Technology Institute, have demonstrated the ability to reduce the time require to design, build and test technologies by a factor of between 10 and 100, from years to months or weeks.[18] This allow research teams to work in a hardware rich environment, failing fast to learn fast. The New Whittle Laboratory is designed to scale this process, acting as a zero carbon technology accelerator. It is intended to be a demonstrator of this technology development process, allowing it to be replicated to other sectors and around the world.[19] The building was designed byGrimshaw Architects.
The New Whittle Laboratory will house the National Centre for Propulsion and Power, providing a new variable density tunnel and rotating test stand as well as the existing experimental facilities, new manufacturing spaces and new office spaces designed to enhance collaboration between researchers, government and industry.King Charles III broke ground on the £58m facility in May 2023,[20] with building work expected to be completed by October 2025.
The Whittle Laboratory is world’s most academically successful propulsion and power lab. Work from the Lab has won over 100 international awards including the Gas Turbine Award, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers highest honour in the field, 15 times.[5] The award has been made once a year since 1963, with Whittle Lab work winning 10 of the last 18.
| Year | Recipient | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Masha Folk, Robert Miller, John Coull | The Impact of CombustorTurbulence on Turbine Loss Mechanisms |
| 2016 | Svilen Savov, Nicholas Atkins, Sumiu Uchida | A Comparison of Single and Double Lip Rim Seal Geometries |
| 2015 | Ho-On To, Robert Miller | The Effect of Aspect Ratio on Compressor Performance |
| 2014 | Robert Grewe, Robert Miller, Howard Hodson | The Effect of Endwall Manufacturing Variations on Turbine Performance |
| 2012 | Graham Pullan, Anna Young, Ivor Day,Edward Greitzer,Zoltán Spakovszky | Origins and Structure of Spike-Type RotatingStall |
| 2010 | Martin Goodhand, Robert Miller | The Impact of Real Geometries on Three-DimensionalSeparations in Compressors |
| 2009 | Budimir Rosic, Eric Curtis, John Denton | Controlling Tip Leakage Flow Over a Shrouded Turbine Rotor Using an Air-Curtain |
| 2006 | Budimir Rosic, John Denton | The Control of Shroud Leakage Loss by Reducing Circumferential Mixing |
| 2005 | Ivor Day, Christopher Freeman, John Williams | Rain Ingestion in Axial Flow Compressors at Part Speed |
| 2004 | Ivor Day, Christopher Freeman, Thomas Scarinci | Passive Control of Combustion Instability in a Low Emissions Aeroderivative Gas Turbine |
| 1997 | Tim Camp, Ivor Day | A Study of Spike and Modal Stall Phenomena in a Low-Speed Axial Compressor |
| 1991 | Ivor Day | Stall Inception in Axial Flow Compressors |
| 1986 | Simon Gallimore, Nicholas Cumpsty | Spanwise Mixing in Multistage Axial Flow Compressors |
| 1984 | Howard Hodson | Boundary Layer and Loss Measurements on the Rotor of an Axial-Flow Turbine |
| 1977 | Ivor Day, Nicholas Cumpsty, Edward Greitzer | Prediction of Compressor Performance in Rotating Stall |
52°12′44″N0°05′35″E / 52.21209°N 0.09298°E /52.21209; 0.09298