Researcher

Dr Duncan Sutherland

My Expertise

Bushfires, computational simulations

Keywords

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Biography

I completed my PhD in 2014 in Applied Mathematics at the University of Sydney. I then worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Victoria University Melbourne on Physics-based Simulation of Bushfires, before joining UNSW Canberra in 2014. I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2022, was appointed deputy director of UNSW Bushfire in 2023, and was appointed maths discipline coordinator in 2024. 


My Grants

Enhancing resilience...view more

I completed my PhD in 2014 in Applied Mathematics at the University of Sydney. I then worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Victoria University Melbourne on Physics-based Simulation of Bushfires, before joining UNSW Canberra in 2014. I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2022, was appointed deputy director of UNSW Bushfire in 2023, and was appointed maths discipline coordinator in 2024. 


My Grants

Enhancing resilience to ember attack on the urban fringe D. Sutherland, J Sharples.D. Sanderson, P. Barnes, Black Summer Recovery Grant $804000, 2022-2024. 

Ember storms on the urban fringe D. Sutherland, J Sharples. Suburban Land Agency contract $70,000, 2022-2023

Gravity Current Driven Smoke Dispersion In a Stratified Ambient, A. Ooi, K. Moinuddin, D. Sutherland, R. Manasseh, ARC Discovery Project, $250,000 2021-2024 

Understanding the Origin and Development of Extreme and Mega Bushfires T. Penman, J. Sharples, K. Moinuddin, J. Hilton, D. Sutherland, C. Clements, ARC Discovery Project, $590,000 2021-2024 

Fire spread across fuel types K. A. M. Moinuddin, G. R. Thorpe, A. Ooi, V. Novozhilov, J. Philip, D. Sutherland, Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, $523,000, 2017-2020

Predicting merging fire behaviour in Planned Burning T. Penman, A. Filkov, B. Cirulis. J. Sharples, D. Sutherland, Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, $100,000, 2020-2021


My Research Activities

My research is the application of computational fluid dynamics simulation to problems motivated by bushfires. This is a broad and rich area encompassing, buoyancy driven flows, entrainment and mixing, particle transport, contaminant modelling, and combustion modelling. 

Currently, my research is focussed on the Large-Eddy Simulation (LES), including combustion, of laboratory-scale extreme fire behaviour, and field-scale grassfires. I also conduct Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of buoyancy driven flow to understand the dynamics and mixing processes of gravity currents. 


My Research Supervision


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Areas of supervision

Duncan has projects available in computational fluid dynamics simulations of bushfires

 


Currently supervising

Tanvir Saurav, Nusrat Mehnaz, Will Swedosh, Mohamad Sadeghi. 


My Teaching

Currently I teach two mathematics subjects: ZPEM1304 Engineering Mathematics 1B, and ZPEM3306 Waves and Fluids. If you are enrolled in one of those courses, please see the Moodle pages for more information.  

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Location

Building 22, Room 215.

Contact

+61 2 5114 5030