U.S.-France Cooperative Research: Laboratory in Numerical Simulations of Unsteady Background Flows Impinging on Arrays of Submarine Canyons

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9815667BoyerThis three-year award in support of U.S.-France collaborative research in ocean sciences involves Don Boyer, David Smith, Nicholas Perenne at Arizona State University and Dominique Renouard of the Laboratoire des Ecoulements Geophysiques et Industriels in Grenoble, France. They will conduct a series of laboratory experiments and associated numerical models of the oscillatory flow of homogenous incompressible fluid in the vicinity of canyon arrays in the deep ocean. The goals of the project are to improve understanding of the nature of coastal current systems and to provide laboratory data sets that can be used as benchmarks for the validation of numerical models. In particular improved models could be used to predict the transport of nutrients and pollutants along the coast and into or out of ocean canyon arrays. The US investigators bring to this collaboration expertise in numerical modeling. This is complemented by French expertise in the design of the laboratory experiments. It also takes advantage of a 13 m diameter, 1 m deep rotating tank facility, a larger tank than iscurrently available at Arizona State University. The tank will be used to simulate the ocean environment, in particular, the continental slope region.