CFD practitioners and experimentalists have a common goal of understanding aerodynamics. It is therefore surprising that often the disciplines have only a very limited interaction, which usually involves the validation of CFD. This practice supports integration at the most basic level but often there is no interaction whatsoever between the experimentalist and the CFD practitioners. This situation is unsatisfactory from many points of view including:

• the need to have an appreciation of the flow before deciding what should be measured;
• the desirability to check experimental measurements as they are taken;
• the difficulty in making certain important measurements;
• the need to assess the influence of the experimental techniques on the measurements;
• the ability of CFD to provide detailed flow information and sensitivity at a reasonable cost for some cases;
• the large cost of CFD calculations for other cases;
• the lack of credibility for the CFD results for some flow categories.

It could be argued that the process of aerodynamic investigation would be significantly enhanced if the integration of CFD and EFD (Experimental Fluid Dynamics) were much stronger. In particular, the design and reliability of EFD could be significantly enhanced by CFD, the scope of experimental measurements extended through CFD and the credibility of the simulation results enhanced by the availability of suitable measurements from EFD. This sort of closer integration is, however, rare. The aim of the symposium is to bring together leading researchers from both fields to initiate more careful consideration of these issues and to stimulate new ways of approaching aerodynamic studies, leading to synergy of the two disciplines.

The symposium is dedicated to the important topic of how to use CFD and EFD towards the goal of improved understanding of aerodynamics. It will be held over three days with different sessions (oral and poster sessions) covering the following topics:

• subsonic and transonic flows
• supersonic, hypersonic, and plasma flows
• internal flows and turbomachinery applications

Each oral session will feature an invited paper from a prominent researcher in the field and contributed talks. The sessions will aim to cover:

• Experimentalists and requirements from CFD
• CFD requirements from experiments
• Examples of Integrated CFD and Experimental studies
• Future perspectives on innovative integration