Peter Ireland FREng DPhil FIMechE

Peter Ireland holds the Donald Schultz Chair in Turbomachinery and is Head of the Oxford Thermofluids Institute.  He is a Fellow of St. Catherine’s College, the Institute of Mechanical Engineering and the Royal Academy of Engineering.  His research group has focussed on the technologies used to cool aero-engines and to decarbonise flight.

Peter’s career has been characterised by introducing innovative solutions to heat transfer measurement or cooling problems. His research pioneered the use of temperature sensitive liquid crystals in heat transfer experiments. The technique is now used by most of the major aero-engine manufacturers in their research and/or evaluation of new turbine blade cooling systems. He is co-inventor of a number of high performance turbine cooling systems used in industry.

Between 2007 and 2011 he was the UK Corporate Specialist in Heat Transfer at Rolls-Royce Aerospace where he held the senior heat transfer specialist role for projects involving turbines, fuel cells, nuclear power, fire modelling, manufacture, instrumentation, heat exchangers, power electronic cooling and combustion.

He has published more than 190 refereed papers, supervised 28 D.Phil. doctoral graduates and is co-inventor for over 25 patents. He directly supervises a group of 16 students and postdoctoral researchers. He is co-founder of two companies spun out from Oxford and consults in the field of heat exchangers, cooling technologies and zero carbon flight.