Professor Simon Watkins
Professor
Details
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College: School of Engineering
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Department: School of Engineering
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Campus: Bundoora East Australia
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simon.watkins@rmit.edu.au
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ORCID: 0000-0001-5550-4941
Open to
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
- Media enquiries
About
Professor Simon Watkins is responsible for undergraduate courses in Thermo-fluids and Vehicle Aerodynamics and is involved with many final year and postgraduate research projects in aerospace and automotive engineering.
Professor Watkins was the originator and architect of the first automotive engineering degree in Australia and also set up RMIT Racing in 2000. RMIT Racing is one of 200+ teams from universities around the world that design and build open-wheel racing cars, winning the FISITA Formula Student World Cup in Silverstone UK in 2007 and the American FSAE event in Detroit in 2006. He now supervises the design, build and testing of all electric FSAE cars. He also leads a Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) Group at RMIT (see below) with funding from the USAF supporting several PhD students.
Accomplishments and achievements
• Chair, Vehicle Wind Noise Committee, SAE International (Detroit, 2000-2003)
• Numerous overseas invited seminars (e.g. CALTECH, 15/1/08, Imperial College 26/6/07)
• Aerodynamic consultant to Ford of Australia, General Motors Holden, Tenix Defence System
• Research commercialisation includes truck aerodynamic drag-reducing devices following over $500,000 of NERDDC grants in the early 1980s. Approximately 1/4 of fuel-saving aerodynamic devices on Australian trucks are from patented/registered designs that arose from the research.
• Aerodynamic consultant for the Aurora Solar Vehicle that won the World Solar Challenge in 1999 and the Sunrace in 2003.
• Successfully supervised students: 20+ PhD or MEng students, many with ARC support, including five APA(I) and six APA students.
• Provided infrastructure, in conjunction with Monash University, extensively supported by ARC funding. This includes the largest wind tunnel in the Southern Hemisphere and key infrastructure arising from several ARC Grants (including Linkage-Infrastructure, two ARC RIEF and two ARC Mechanism C) totalling $2.649 m.
Professor Watkins was the originator and architect of the first automotive engineering degree in Australia and also set up RMIT Racing in 2000. RMIT Racing is one of 200+ teams from universities around the world that design and build open-wheel racing cars, winning the FISITA Formula Student World Cup in Silverstone UK in 2007 and the American FSAE event in Detroit in 2006. He now supervises the design, build and testing of all electric FSAE cars. He also leads a Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) Group at RMIT (see below) with funding from the USAF supporting several PhD students.
Accomplishments and achievements
• Chair, Vehicle Wind Noise Committee, SAE International (Detroit, 2000-2003)
• Numerous overseas invited seminars (e.g. CALTECH, 15/1/08, Imperial College 26/6/07)
• Aerodynamic consultant to Ford of Australia, General Motors Holden, Tenix Defence System
• Research commercialisation includes truck aerodynamic drag-reducing devices following over $500,000 of NERDDC grants in the early 1980s. Approximately 1/4 of fuel-saving aerodynamic devices on Australian trucks are from patented/registered designs that arose from the research.
• Aerodynamic consultant for the Aurora Solar Vehicle that won the World Solar Challenge in 1999 and the Sunrace in 2003.
• Successfully supervised students: 20+ PhD or MEng students, many with ARC support, including five APA(I) and six APA students.
• Provided infrastructure, in conjunction with Monash University, extensively supported by ARC funding. This includes the largest wind tunnel in the Southern Hemisphere and key infrastructure arising from several ARC Grants (including Linkage-Infrastructure, two ARC RIEF and two ARC Mechanism C) totalling $2.649 m.
Media
Academic positions
- Professor, Automotive Engineering
- RMIT University
- Aerospace Engineering and Aviation
- Melbourne, Australia
- 1 Jan 2008 – Present
- Program Leader, Bachelor of Engineering (Automotive)
- RMIT University
- Aerospace Engineering and Aviation
- Melbourne, Australia
- 1 Jan 2000 – 31 Dec 2006
- Visiting Professor
- University of Stuttgart
- Stuttgart, Germany
- 1 Jun 1999 – 30 Jun 2000
- Manager, RMIT Industrial Wind Tunnel
- RMIT University
- Aerospace Engineering and Aviation
- Melbourne, Australia
- 1 Jan 1995 – 31 Dec 2009
- Research Engineer
- City, University of London
- London, United Kingdom
- 1 Jan 1980 – 31 Dec 1983
Non-academic positions
- Director, Society of Automotive Engineers-Australasia (SAE-A)
- Society of Automotive Engineers-Australasia (SAE-A)
- , Australia
- 1 Jan 2000 – 31 Dec 2007
- Faculty Advisor RMIT FSAE Racing Team
- RMIT University
- RMIT FSAE Racing Team
- Melbourne, Australia
- 1 Jan 2000 – 31 Dec 2010
- Graduate and Trainee Engineer
- British Aerospace
- , United Kingdom
- 1 Jan 1977 – 31 Dec 1980
Supervisor projects
- Sustainable High-Speed Transportation: Understanding of Shock Dynamics in Evacuated Tube Trains and Their Numerical Prediction
- 9 Oct 2023
- Turbulence mitigation
- 1 Mar 2023
- Automatic Flight Control System for Micro Air Vehicle inside Turbulent Urban Environment
- 23 Nov 2022
- Swarming UAV Flight in Turbulence for Distributed Sensing of Airborne Contaminants
- 10 Mar 2022
- Studying Bird Flight in Turbulence
- 14 Dec 2020
- Kestrel-Inspired Morphing and Actuation: Bird Flight Insights and Technological Applications
- 19 Oct 2020
- Crashworthiness Analysis for Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing Vehicles
- 15 Sep 2020
- Studying Bird Flight in Turbulence
- 4 Jun 2020
- Mission Impossible: Design & Manufacture of A Solar Car That Appeals To The General Public
- 6 May 2019
- Human Behaviour Sensing and Profiling in the Wild
- 16 Apr 2018
- The space between: project-based attribute optimization of a practical solar car
- 1 Aug 2017
- Rotor Aerodynamic Interaction Effects for Multirotor Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Forward Flight
- 22 Feb 2016
- Strategies Exhibited by Bumblebees when Challenged with Aerodynamic and Obstacle Disturbances
- 22 Feb 2016
- Aerodynamics of Leading-edge and Trailing-edge Control Surfaces at Low Reynolds Number
- 22 Feb 2016
- On the Human Perception of Pulsatile Airflow
- 23 Jul 2013
- Muscle and Soft Tissue Monitoring via Smart Compression Garments
- 5 Mar 2013
- The composition and generation of open-wheel racing car wakes
- 28 Feb 2011
Teaching interests
Supervisor interests
Aerospace, maritime and automotive engineering
Aerospace, maritime and automotive engineering
Research interests
What the MAV Group does
MAVs are “a class of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that has a size restriction and may be autonomous. Modern craft can be as small as 15 centimetres. Development is driven by commercial, research, government, and military purposes; with insect-sized aircraft reportedly expected in the future. The small craft allows remote observation of hazardous environments inaccessible to ground vehicles. MAVs have been built for hobby purposes, such as aerial robotics contests and aerial photography."
My interest in micro planes has resulted in a research group in the MAV Group which we started in 2001, by producing one of the lightest airframe (7.3g) membrane-structure micro air vehicles in the world at that time. In the last few years we have been awarded 8 grants by the USAF for work on understanding the dynamic response of fixed, rotary and flapping wing MAVs in turbulent flow, including 5 Window on Science travel grants to give invited talks at US and European meetings. Most research is now focussed on understanding MAVs and the influence of both their design type (e.g. fixed wing vs flapping vs rotary) and how these differing designs cope with the effects of atmospheric turbulence. I supervise several PhD students in this area.
We have been focusing on how MAVs will cope with the turbulence inherent in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) in order to make MAVs more useful. Our previous work documented the temporal and spatial environment of flight through turbulence inherent in the ABL, as would be perceived by MAVs, both manmade and natural (e.g. small birds, insects). This has involved working with the instrumented eagle of the Oxford Animal Flight Group where we took multi-point measurements of turbulence whilst the instrumented eagle was soaring and high-speed videoing on locusts flying in smooth and turbulent flow in our wind tunnels.
We have replicated this turbulent environment in several wind tunnels, including the largest wind tunnel in the Southern Hemisphere and shown that aspects of the naturally turbulent flow environment had been reproduced with good accuracy.
Flying experiments
We have flown instrumented fixed-wing, rotary-wing and flapping-wing MAVs in the tunnel, including some aerobatics (and many crashes!). Pilot inputs and aircraft accelerations were recorded on the MAVs. For some tests, synchronised measurements of the approach flow time history (u,v,w sampled at 1250 Hz) at four laterally disposed locations were made and retro-reflective markers and six video cameras permitted video tracking. The piloting aim was to hold straight and level flight in the 12m wide x 4m high x ~50m long test section whilst flying in a range of turbulent wind conditions. The results showed that the rotary craft were less sensitive to the effects of turbulence compared to the fixed-wing craft. It was found that whilst fixed-wing aircraft were relatively easy to fly in smooth air, they became extremely difficult to fly under high turbulence conditions. Rotary craft, whilst somewhat more difficult to fly per se, did not become significantly harder to fly in relatively high turbulence levels.
MAVs are “a class of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that has a size restriction and may be autonomous. Modern craft can be as small as 15 centimetres. Development is driven by commercial, research, government, and military purposes; with insect-sized aircraft reportedly expected in the future. The small craft allows remote observation of hazardous environments inaccessible to ground vehicles. MAVs have been built for hobby purposes, such as aerial robotics contests and aerial photography."
My interest in micro planes has resulted in a research group in the MAV Group which we started in 2001, by producing one of the lightest airframe (7.3g) membrane-structure micro air vehicles in the world at that time. In the last few years we have been awarded 8 grants by the USAF for work on understanding the dynamic response of fixed, rotary and flapping wing MAVs in turbulent flow, including 5 Window on Science travel grants to give invited talks at US and European meetings. Most research is now focussed on understanding MAVs and the influence of both their design type (e.g. fixed wing vs flapping vs rotary) and how these differing designs cope with the effects of atmospheric turbulence. I supervise several PhD students in this area.
We have been focusing on how MAVs will cope with the turbulence inherent in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) in order to make MAVs more useful. Our previous work documented the temporal and spatial environment of flight through turbulence inherent in the ABL, as would be perceived by MAVs, both manmade and natural (e.g. small birds, insects). This has involved working with the instrumented eagle of the Oxford Animal Flight Group where we took multi-point measurements of turbulence whilst the instrumented eagle was soaring and high-speed videoing on locusts flying in smooth and turbulent flow in our wind tunnels.
We have replicated this turbulent environment in several wind tunnels, including the largest wind tunnel in the Southern Hemisphere and shown that aspects of the naturally turbulent flow environment had been reproduced with good accuracy.
Flying experiments
We have flown instrumented fixed-wing, rotary-wing and flapping-wing MAVs in the tunnel, including some aerobatics (and many crashes!). Pilot inputs and aircraft accelerations were recorded on the MAVs. For some tests, synchronised measurements of the approach flow time history (u,v,w sampled at 1250 Hz) at four laterally disposed locations were made and retro-reflective markers and six video cameras permitted video tracking. The piloting aim was to hold straight and level flight in the 12m wide x 4m high x ~50m long test section whilst flying in a range of turbulent wind conditions. The results showed that the rotary craft were less sensitive to the effects of turbulence compared to the fixed-wing craft. It was found that whilst fixed-wing aircraft were relatively easy to fly in smooth air, they became extremely difficult to fly under high turbulence conditions. Rotary craft, whilst somewhat more difficult to fly per se, did not become significantly harder to fly in relatively high turbulence levels.
