Research and Education in Multi-Scale Fluid Dynamics

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This project concerns theoretical modeling of transport in fluid systems. The award supports both improved scientific understanding of fluid behavior and research experiences for undergraduate and graduate students of the natural sciences. The research is focused on averaging of gravity currents in groundwater flow; analytical, asymptotic, and computational calculation of effective mixing coefficients in turbulent mixing; and experimental and theoretical study of stratified fluid systems. Students participate in the research on stratified fluid dynamics through an experimental fluid dynamics laboratory.The natural environment is influenced by a complex system of coupled fluids whose dynamics occur on a wide range of space and time scales. Understanding the dynamics of this system, from the smallest scale turbulent mixing in the ocean to the largest scale atmospheric weather systems, is a central goal of the geosciences. The complete description of such a system remains beyond the computational scope of even the largest supercomputers, and a fundamental scientific endeavor is to characterize and understand phenomena on different scales, ultimately to understand how a large scale system functions as a whole. This award supports mathematical investigation of fluid systems for which interplay between scales may be mathematically explained. Insight gained from the project will have application to understanding multiple-scale fluid behavior in the environment.