Dr Duncan Sutherland

Duncan Sutherland works on computational models of wildfires.

He currently works on two strands of research in this area. Firstly developing simple models which capture the effect of a forest canopy on the mean vertical wind profile through the forest and how the canopy affects the rate of spread of a wildfire. Secondly, he studies the boundary layer of mixed convective flow near a heated vertical wall. Improved log-law models for the velocity and temperature near vertical surfaces have significant applications in fire prediction at the wildland-urban interface and micrometeorology.