Maths & Cycling
Maths
I am a Professor of Applied Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Manchester.
- Research
- My research is focused on the mathematical modelling and computational solution of problems in fluid and solid mechanics, as well as other interesting problems, incl. those arising through consultancy work for industry.
- Things I have worked on include:
- Fluid-structure interaction (FSI):
- Flow in collapsible tubes
- Pulmonary airway closure and reopening (free-surface flows in elastic vessels)
- The suppression of viscous fingering in elastic-walled Hele-Shaw cells
- Poroelastic FSI modelling of syringomyelia
- Development of efficient preconditioners / solvers for such problems
- Newtonian and non-Newtonian free-surface flows
- Topological fluid mechanics and vortex dynamics
- Wrinkling and buckling of thin elastic sheets/shells
- Various other projects from Glaciology to biomedical problems
- Scientific computing -- oomph-lib
- Fluid-structure interaction (FSI):
- Most of my papers are on google scholar. Have a look -- they are all lovely!
- Here are some recent collaborators:
- I am always interested in supervising keen PhD students. Here are some who are currently taking (or have recently taken) the ride:
- Rupinder Matharu
- Aidan
Retallick
I think my head is about to explode; with Aidan - Tym Miara
- Christian Vaquero-Stainer
Doing some hard maths with Christian - Puneet Matharu
- Jonathan Deakin
- David Robinson
- Nico Bergemann
I am happy to supervise MSc projects or summer internships. Send me an email if you want to find out more and/or want to get involved.
- oomph-lib
- oomph-lib is the open-source object-oriented multi-physics finite-element library, hosted on GitHub
at
https://github.com/oomph-lib/oomph-lib It is the main workhorse of our group, and is currently maintained jointly with Andrew Hazel (the co-founder/co-architect of the project all those years ago) and Puneet Matharu. Regular contributions and bug fixes are provided by many local and external collaborators. - The code is extremely well documented. Have a look at
https://oomph-lib.github.io/oomph-lib/doc/html to get a feeling for the capabilities and the many detailed tutorials.
Flow in a collapsible tube, simulated with oomph-lib - We are always looking for people to get involved, so if you like maths, physics, C++ (and chocolate biscuits!) get in touch and feel free to join our weekly oomph-lunch.
- Editorial work etc
- I am the joint Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Fluids and Structures
- I am the Chair of the Euromech Fluid Mechanics Conference Committee.
- I am on the Executive Committee of the UK Fluids Network
- Teaching etc
- I currently teach the following courses:
- MATH20401: Vector Calculus and PDEs
- MATH35002: Viscous Fluids
- In the past I have taught:
- MATH10222: ODEs and applications
- MATH30201: Elasticity
- I am also spending a fair amount of time in my role as the Department's PGR Director, meaning (in acroynym free form!) that I look after our lovely PhD students from an administrative point of view.
Cycling
When I don't do hard sums, I tend to sit on my bike... Needless to say that I'm on 
.
- Outdoors
- There used to be a time when cycling was done outdoors.
Winning the pink vase on the Grossglockner - Here are a few good ones from those days:
- "Ride your birthday" (2017): 242.28km, 4,112m
- "Ride your birthday" (2018): 242.10km, 4,320m
- "Ride your birthday" (2019): 250.78km, 4,337m
- Grossglockner (2019): 56.62km, 1,812m
- Kitzbueheler Horn (2019): 152.77km, 2,528m
- Indoors
- I've become addicted to indoor cycling on Rouvy,
- Virtual Everesting:
- My first one (2019): 281.58km, 8,852m
- 10,000m vertical (2020): 373.91km, 10,021m
- Maybe the hardest one (2022): 207.55km, 8,852m; brutal slopes.
Before and after the NZ everesting - The full Brevet series:
Paris-Brest-Paris is the most famous Audax/Brevet ride in the real (!) world: 1200km, to be completed in under 90 hours. Needless to say it involves a whole series of qualifiers too. Surely one ought to be able to do this indoors...- Qualifiers:
- The
big one: 1200km (2023)
Indoor breveting accelerates ageing!
- Selected other indoor insanities:
- "Ride your birthday" (2021): 273.63km, 4,372m
- Deutsche Alpenstrasse (2021): 485.64km, 5,223m
- Red Bull Timelaps (2021): 627.87km, 4,249m
- 500km Brevet in NZ (2022): 500.50km, 4,477m
- rvy_racing: Two races a week with some seriously fast guys. The league runs from October-March.
- Fake commutes: Every morning at 7am 20-50 minutes of all-out racing (unless I have to do a non-fake commute in the real world).
- Virtual Everesting:
Contact
Want to get in touch?
- Email me: M.Heil at maths.manchester.ac.uk
- Call me: (+44)(0)161 2755808 (Actually, don't call me; I hate phones!)
- Visit me:
Room 2.224
Alan Turing Building
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL, U.K.