A Northumbria University researcher has secured a prestigious national grant to redesign wind turbine blades by borrowing two of nature's most elegant aerodynamic solutions: the humpback whale's ridged flippers and the near-silent feathers of the barn owl.

Project WHOWL – short for WHale and OWL-inspired synergistic aerodynamic–aeroacoustic control for wind turbine blades – has a total value of approximately £500,000. Around £400,000 comes from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), with the remainder contributed by Northumbria University and the University of Leeds.

It is one of only 15 projects selected across the UK under EPSRC's flagship Unlocking the Full Potential of Nature-Based Engineering programme – a £6 million initiative to translate biological adaptations into engineering breakthroughs.

WHOWL is the only project in the cohort focused on wind energy, and the only one led from the North East of England.

For years, wind turbine engineers have been caught between two competing demands: the blade designs that generate the most electricity also tend to make it louder, forcing a choice between more power or less noise.

To comply with noise regulations, particularly at night, operators routinely reduce how fast the blades spin and adjust how they are angled into the wind, sacrificing up to 5% of a site’s clean energy potential in the process.

The challenge grows as turbines get larger: longer blades mean higher blade-tip speeds, which push up aerodynamic noise unless carefully controlled.

WHOWL’s answer is to look to nature for a solution. Humpback whales manoeuvre their vast bodies with remarkable agility, thanks to distinctive bumps, known as tubercles, along the leading edge of their flippers.

These bumps generate small, controlled vortices that keep flow attached to the flipper even at steep angles, allowing the whale to keep generating lift where a smooth surface would stall – the same principle WHOWL aims to harness on a turbine blade.

The barn owl tackles the same problem differently. A soft fringe along the trailing edge of its wing feathers breaks up the turbulence that would otherwise turn into noise, allowing it to fly in near silence.

Both adaptations have been studied individually in engineering contexts, but they have never been combined on a single wind turbine blade as a co-designed system.

WHOWL's central idea is that the two adaptations could work better together than either does alone – with the whale-inspired bumps altering airflow in a way that makes the owl-inspired trailing edge, whether serrated or fringed, more effective at reducing noise.

The 24-month project, starting in October this year, will test and computationally model hybrid blade designs using Northumbria University’s wind tunnel facility and Higgs High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster – a multi-million-pound, university-wide computing facility designed to accelerate advanced scientific research and intensive data modelling.

The team is targeting a 5% improvement in energy output and a reduction in noise of 6-10 decibels – the equivalent of roughly halving the perceived loudness of the turbine.

If achieved at scale, deployment across the UK's fleet of around 10,000 wind turbines could potentially recover around three terawatt-hours of electricity a year – enough to power around a million UK homes, the equivalent of the entire domestic electricity needs of the North East of England. It would also avoid approximately one million tonnes of CO₂ from gas-fired backup generation entering the atmosphere.

Speaking about the project, Dr Xiang (Shaun) Shen, Senior Lecturer in Aerodynamics at Northumbria University, said: “I've been fascinated for years by the idea that the answers to some of our hardest engineering problems are already out there, shaped by millions of years of evolution.

“The humpback whale and the owl have each evolved their own way to move efficiently and quietly, and we're bringing both solutions together on a single wind-turbine blade for the first time.

“If we're right, it means wind turbines won't have to choose between generating more power and being quieter, and that could unlock a real amount of clean energy for the UK.

“Being the only wind energy project in this national programme is a real responsibility, and a fantastic opportunity to put the North East at the forefront of this field.”

Dr Shen leads the project from Northumbria, with support from senior faculty technician Martin Purvis, and postgraduate research student Vlad Volodkovic.

Dr Graham Askew, project co-lead and an expert in the biomechanics of animal movement at the University of Leeds, said: “As a biologist, I am fascinated by the extraordinary ways in which evolution has shaped animals to meet specific challenges.

“Whales have evolved adaptations to enable efficient movement through water, while owls possess specialised features that allow them to fly with remarkable stealth.

“By understanding the biological principles that underlie these adaptations, we can translate nature’s designs into technologies that address global challenges such as sustainable energy.”

The project is supported by domestic and international organisations: ORE Catapult, the UK's leading technology innovation and research centre for offshore renewable energy based in Blyth; WhalePower Corporation, a Canadian company that has commercialised whale-inspired technology; and West Chester University in the United States, home of Professor Frank Fish, the world’s leading authority on the fluid dynamics of cetacean locomotion and the founder of WhalePower.

The project also includes an unusual feature built into the EPSRC programme: a ring-fenced £75,000 dedicated to developing early-career researchers – a role Northumbria is currently recruiting for. This investment directly addresses the job insecurity that postdoctoral researchers commonly face.

WHOWL’s postdoctoral researcher will receive specialist training in computational fluid dynamics and experimental flow measurement in the UK and at ORE Catapult’s Blyth facility, as well as a research visit to Professor Fish at West Chester University in the United States and international conference opportunities.

WHOWL supports Northumbria’s Energy Futures and Biodesign for the Bioeconomy research themes and aligns with the university’s Strategy 2030 and its commitment to achieving net zero by 2040.

As the only North East-led project in the EPSRC cohort, it also reinforces the region’s growing role in the UK’s offshore wind supply chain.