Advanced Numerical Modelling of Wave Structure Interaction

Dr. David M. Kelly received a first-class Bachelors Degree in Environmental Physics with Mathematics from the University of East Anglia Norwich (UK) in 2000. Dr. Kelly later obtained a PhD. in Civil Engineering from the University of Nottingham (UK), with Prof. Nicholas Dodd as his thesis advisor, in January 2009. Dr. Kelly's PhD thesis focused on developing numerical models for swash zone hydro- morphodynamics. Following this Dr. Kelly worked as a research associate on a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) between the University of Nottingham and HR Wallingford funded by the UK government. Dr. Kelly was then employed by HR Wallingford as a research engineer and later a senior research engineer. During his time at HR Wallingford Dr. Kelly was responsible for the development and maintenance of a number of commercial CFD codes. In particular Dr. Kelly developed a commercial tsunami propagation model and worked on innovative solutions for two-way full Navier Stokes based solvers for fluid structure interactions. Along with Dr. A. Dimakopoulos at HR Wallingford Dr. Kelly co-developed a two phase Navier Stokes solver to simulate oscillating water column wave energy devices for commercial application. Dr. Kelly and colleagues at HR Wallingford and the University of Bath have pioneered the use of hybrid Eulerian-Lagrangian particle in cell (PIC) techniques for coastal engineering applications. Dr. Kelly has worked closely with Electricite de France (EDF) R&D to develop several aspects of the TELEMAC modeling suite. Specifically Dr. Kelly has contributed to the numerical modeling of suspended sediment in TELEMAC 2D and recently the advection and diffusion of tracers in TELEMAC 3D. Dr. Kelly's work forms part of the official TELEMAC modeling suite. Dr Kelly currently works as an Assistant Professor at the International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University where he is the principal developer of the new dynamic adaptive mesh, massively parallel storm surge model. Dr. Kelly has published work in several prestigious international journals including the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Computers and Fluids, International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids and the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (SISC) and co-supervised two PhD students at UK Universities.


Dr. Aggelos Dimakopoulos (A.Dimakopoulos@hrwallingford.com) is a practicing Civil Engineer (MEng, MSc, PhD) and an expert in CFD applications to coastal and open channel flows. He has over 13 years of experience in developing and using CFD models. He graduated as a Doctor of Civil Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece and his PhD thesis was on designing and numerically implementing a novel turbulent modelling approach for wave breaking in the surf zone. After that he spent one year in Instituto Superior Tecnico as a post-doc researcher and in University of Cyprus as a visiting researcher, where he was mainly involved in CFD modelling of channel flow through vegetation arrays. Dr. Dimakopoulos joined HR Wallingford (UK) in May 2012, and since then, he has been involved in a range of commercial and research projects; in particular, he has been involved in developing the CFD capabilities of the company. Dr. Dimakopoulos has been involved in numerous consultancy studies concerning the application of CFD models to assess and optimize the design of coastal and hydraulic structures. He is currently leading a team of 2 engineers and 3 PhD students and he is always interested in the development and the application of CFD models, aiming to reduce uncertainties caused by the interaction of waves, structures and turbulence.


Dr. Pablo Higuera Caubilla (ceephc@nus.edu.sg) graduated in 2010, obtaining a first-in-class degree in Civil Engineering. He immediately pursued a MSc in Coastal and Port Engineering (2012) and a PhD in Civil/Coastal Engineering (2015), all of them at the University of Cantabria (Spain) and linked to the Environmental Hydraulics Institute IH Cantabria.


During his PhD, Dr Higuera studied all sorts of coastal engineering processes using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). As part of his PhD, he developed the open source numerical model ihFoam, based on OpenFOAM framework. Major achievements included the development of new modules for wave generation and active wave absorption, flow through porous media and a thorough validation of the model. After obtaining his PhD, Dr Higuera was a postdoc at Imperial College London, where he studied flow and rock mechanics within armour layers in breakwaters, based on CFD and Finite Element Method - Discrete Elements Method (FEMDEM) models, aiding in the incorporation of hydrodynamic forcings to Solidity Project. Dr Higuera is currently a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore, where he continues the study of wave-driven hydrodynamics with OpenFOAM. In his free time he continues to contribute to the coastal community with open source developments, now under the name of OlaFoam Project.