Dr. Peter Ireland

Biography

Peter Ireland holds the Donald Schultz Chair in Turbomachinery and is the Head of the Oxford Thermofluids Institute. His research group focuses on technologies used to cool aero-engines and decarbonize flight. Throughout his career, Ireland has been characterized by introducing innovative solutions to heat transfer measurement and cooling problems. He pioneered the use of temperature-sensitive liquid crystals in heat transfer experiments, a technique utilized by major aero-engine manufacturers for research and evaluation of new turbine blade cooling systems. Ireland is also a co-inventor of several high-performance turbine cooling systems used in the industry. From 2007 to 2011, he served as a UK Corporate Specialist in Heat Transfer at Rolls-Royce Aerospace, where he held a senior heat transfer specialist role on projects involving turbines, fuel cells, nuclear power, fire modeling, manufacturing, instrumentation, heat exchangers, and power electronic cooling combustion. He has published more than 230 papers, supervised 34 D.Phil. doctoral graduates, and is a co-inventor on 25 patents. Currently, he directly supervises a group of 16 students and postdoctoral researchers and is a co-founder of companies spun out from Oxford that consult in the field of heat exchangers and cooling technologies for zero-carbon flight. He is also a Fellow at St. Catherine’s College, St. Anne’s College, the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Research Interests