Prof. Pullan, Prof. Spakovszky and Dr Grimshaw receiving their awards in Milan in June 2026
Girton Fellow Dr Sam Grimshaw has received international recognition as a co-author of A Unified Framework for Compressor Stall Inception, which won the Best Paper Award from the Turbomachinery Committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
The award recognises the most outstanding compressor research presented annually at ASME Turbo Expo, the world's leading turbomachinery conference. The paper was presented at the 2025 conference in Memphis, Tennessee, and the authors collected their award at the 2026 event in Milan, Italy.
The research is the culmination of almost a decade of collaboration between researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Whittle Laboratory, the Gas Turbine Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Research and Innovation Centre in Japan. Dr Grimshaw co-authored the work with Professor Graham Pullan, Co-Director of Cambridge’s Whittle Laboratory, together with MIT Professors Edward Greitzer and Zoltán Spakovszky.
Compressors are at the heart of modern gas turbines and jet engines, but they can become unstable under certain operating conditions, leading to an aerodynamic disturbance known as ‘stall’. Stall limits engine performance and, in severe cases, can cause damaging failures. The paper presents a first-of-a-kind description of the phenomenon which unifies the two different routes to stall reported in the literature since the 1980s. The work offers a foundation for improved compressor design and control, with the potential to enhance the efficiency, responsiveness, and reliability of future energy systems and aircraft engines.
Reflecting on the award, Dr Grimshaw said:
“This paper is the result of a long-running collaboration with colleagues at MIT and MHI. We’ve been working on this question for almost ten years, so we were pleased to finally present the paper, and even more delighted that it has been recognised with this award.”
The award-winning paper, A Unified Framework for Compressor Stall Inception | J. Turbomach. | ASME Digital Collection, is available to read as an open access publication.
