Stefan Felder

Lecturer, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research interests

Dr Stefan Felder is a Lecturer in Hydraulic Engineering and Applied Fluid Mechanics in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW.  His expertise is in the fields of water engineering, hydraulic engineering and environmental fluid mechanics. He uses his expertise to improve hydraulic designs, flow performances and environmental flows in urban stormwater, flow conveyance, wastewater and irrigation systems. His specialised research interests include:

- Energy dissipation and design optimisation of hydraulic structures.

- Aeration and air-water interactions in high-velocity free-surface flows.

- Physical modelling and scale effects.

- Bed roughness effects in flow control structures and hydraulic jumps.

- Flow-structure interactions including turbulence and boundary layers.

- Near-critical free-surface flows.

- Interactions between free-surface and pressurised flows in stormwater systems.

- Unsteady air-water flows in spillways, hydraulic jumps and swash zone.

- Eco-engineering of smart tidal gates.

- Design of instrumentation and advanced data processing tools.

Lectures/Courses taught

CVEN2501 Principles of Water Engineering

CVEN3502 Water and Wastewater Engineering

CVEN4507 Advanced Water Engineering

CVEN9611 Urban Hydrology

Students

Number currently in lab: 3 PhD students

PhD Student projects:

Laura Montano (2016 - continuing): "Optimum Design of Stilling Basin and Energy Dissipators."; Principle supervisor

Usama Al-Fakher (2016 - continuing): "Predicting Suspended Sediment Transport in Open Channel Flows"; Co-supervisor

Armaghan Severi (2015 - continuing): "Air Entrainment and Flow Resistance in High Velocity Two Phase Flows"; Principle supervisor

Looking for students for projects related to:

Design optimisation of hydraulic structures;

Physical modelling of steady and unsteady free-surface and closed-conduits flows;

Interactions between air-water flows, air-water mass transfer and flow turbulence;

Climate change adaptation in estuarine and urban environments;

Ecohydraulics and environmental fluid mechanics.

Awards and Grants

UNSW Australia Faculty of Engineering Silverstar Award “Air-water mass transfer enhancement in human-made hydraulic structures”, 2016, $30,000

UNSW Australia Faculty of Engineering Early Career Research Grant, “Experimental investigation of near-critical flows in hydraulic structures”, 2015, $35,000

University of Queensland Dean’s Award for Research Higher Degree Excellence for Ph.D. thesis, 2013

Graduate School International Travel Award, The University of Queensland, 2011

Professional involvement

Member                       Engineers Australia (MIEAust)

Member                       International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR)

Committee Member      Sydney Water Panel (Engineers Australia)

Member                       Brisbane Organisation Committee (BOC) for the 34^th IAHR World Congress (2011)

Education

Ph.D. in Hydraulic Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, Australia; 2013

Dipl.-Ing. in Civil Engineering (Specialisation in Environmental Technology), RWTH Aachen University, Germany; 2008