Amanda Smyth MEng PhD

Amanda Smyth holds an MEng in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London (2011-2015) and a PhD on tidal turbine fluid mechanics from the University of Cambridge (Murray Edwards College, 2015-2019). During 2019-2020 Amanda worked as a research associate in the Whittle Laboratory at the Cambridge University Engineering Department under an EPSRC Doctoral Fellowship Award. In October 2020 she started a Career Development Fellowship at St Hugh's College, Oxford, and in 2024 she was appointed as a Departmental Lecturer at the Oxford Department of Engineering Science.

Amanda's main research area is unsteady fluid dynamic interactions with aerofoils, wings and rotor blades, with a particular focus on 3D flow and geometry effects. The primary applications of her research are offshore renewable energy devices (wind and tidal turbines), and bio-inspired robotic propulsion.

Her past work has explored the limitations of 2D strip-theory approaches to wing and rotor modelling, in particular when applied to tidal turbine blades, which are highly three-dimensional in shape. Her PhD thesis title was “Three-Dimensional Unsteady Hydrodynamics of Tidal Turbines“ (https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.48853). She has also studied mitigation strategies to minimise unsteady hydrodynamic loading on tidal turbines, and on analysis tools for identifying potentially damaging gusts in the incoming flow.

Amanda’s current work on offshore renewable energy devices centres on physics-based low-order model development for accurate load and resource estimation, and on novel turbine-and farm-scale control strategies for increased power generation.

Amanda has also worked on analysing undulatory swimming kinematics for soft robotics applications, and is currently supervising work on novel design methodologies for bio-inspired underwater propulsion mechanics.

Amanda primarily uses a combination of high- and low-order numerical simulations to carry out her research, as well as analytical modelling.

Journal papers:

Smyth, A.S.M., Zilic de Arcos, F., Young, A.M., “Unsteady gust interaction with tidal rotors: Importance of 3D wake effects and implications for turbine load modelling”, [IN REVIEW] PREPRINT: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3688286/v1

Smyth, A.S.M., Young, A.M., Di Mare, L., “Generating high-efficiency swimming kinematics using hydrodynamic eigenmode decomposition”, Physics of Fluids 35(8) 2023. DOI: 10.1063/5.0158170

Viola, I.M., Pisetta, G., Dai, W., Arredondo-Galeana, A., Young, A.M., Smyth, A.S.M., “Morphing Blades: Theory and Proof of Principles”, International Marine Energy Journal 5(2):183-193 2022. DOI: 10.36688/imej.5.183-193

Arredondo-Galeana, A., Young, A.M., Smyth, A.S.M., Viola, I. M., “Unsteady load mitigation through a passive trailing-edge flap”, Journal of Fluids and Structures, Volume 106 2021, 103352. DOI: 10.1016/j.jfluidstructs.2021.103352

Smyth, A.S.M., Young, A.M., Di Mare, L., “Effect of 3D Geometry on Harmonic Gust-airfoil Interaction”, AIAA Journal (special edition) 59:2 2021, pp. 737-750. DOI: 10.2514/1.J059661

Young, A.M., Smyth, A.S.M., “Gust-aerofoil Coupling with a Loaded Airfoil”, AIAA Journal (special edition) 59:3 2021, pp. 773-785. DOI: 10.2514/1.J059688

Conference papers:

Smyth, A.S.M., Nishino, T., Young, A.M., “Effect of unsteady uniform inflow on the stability of tidal turbine wake vortices”, European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference (EWTEC), September 2023. DOI: 10.36688/ewtec-2023-454

Patel, M., Smyth, A.S.M., Angeloudis, A., Adcock, T., “Investigation of Low Order Parameters Affecting Tidal Stream Energy Resource Assessments”, European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference (EWTEC), September 2023. DOI: 10.36688/ewtec-2023-171

Smyth, A.S.M., Young, A.M., Gaurier, B., Germain, G., “Experimental investigation of the impact of tidal turbine blade design on performance in turbulent flow”, European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference (EWTEC) September 2021.

Young, A.M., Smyth, A.S.M., “The Interaction of a Sears-type Sinusoidal Gust With a Cambered Aerofoil in the Presence of Non-uniform Streamwise Flow”, AIAA SciTech 2020 Forum. DOI: 10.2514/6.2020-0558

Smyth, A.S.M., Young, A.M., “Three-Dimensional Unsteady Hydrodynamic Modelling of Tidal Turbines”, European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference (EWTEC) September 2019. DOI: 10.17863/CAM.40077

Young, A. M., Smyth, A. S. M., Bajpai, V., Augarde, R. F., Farman, J. R., Sequeira, C. L., “Improving Tidal Turbine Efficiency Using Winglets”, European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference (EWTEC) September 2019.

Smyth, A.S.M., Young, A.M., Di Mare, L., “The Effect of 3D Geometry on Unsteady Gust Response, Using a Vortex Lattice Model”, AIAA SciTech 2019 Forum. DOI: 10.2514/6.2019-0899

Recorded talks

• "Tidal Turbines: Unsteady hydrodynamics in 3D" available on the UK Fluids Network website: https://fluids.ac.uk/talks/1409