EAGER: A Prototype System for Electrical and Meteorological Measurements in Convective Vortices

首席研究员（PI）计划制造和测试一个原型仪器，以获得描述大气中小规模对流（即热驱动）涡旋行为的专门测量。对流涡旋的大小不等，从小型的短期环流（如“尘卷风”）到更大、更持久的飓风级环流，在热量、动量和示踪物质（如尘埃和其他形式的气溶胶）的垂直输送中发挥重要作用。PI最近提出了一个关于这些漩涡的广义理论，其中包括不可逆热力学过程的影响（追溯到空气的粘度和由此导致的湍流动量损失）和其他能量来源/汇。这一理论提供了一个与压力和流速相关的数学表达式，揭示了它们所观察到的强度和基本结构特征，包括它们表现出空心（或“静眼”）型结构的趋势。PI将指导一名全职研究生和实验室技术人员设计、制造和测试一个能够获得适当测试该理论所需的压力测量的prandtl管数据采集系统。该仪器将安装在一个适合远程部署的短塔上，将以所需的分辨率同时测量静态和动态（停滞产生的）流体压力，并将结合带电粒子的检测，这些带电粒子反过来又与已知在一些充满灰尘的循环中出现的带状流动结构的存在相关联。这项工作的智力价值来自于对各种尺度上控制旋转大气流动的动力学的基本理解的提高。这项探索性工作的更广泛影响将主要来自对研究生教育的支持，但最终可能扩展到改进对从广阔的沙漠中扬起灰尘的过程（以及相关的气候系统影响）的描述，以及对破坏性风暴（如雷暴引发的龙卷风）的详细预测。

The Principal Investigator (PI) plans to fabricate and test a prototype instrument in an effort to obtain specialized measurements describing the behavior of small-scale convective (i.e. thermally-driven) vortices in the atmosphere. Convective vortices range in size from small short-lived gyres (such as "dust devils") to far larger and more persistent hurricane-class circulations, and play an important role in vertical transports of heat, momentum and tracer species such as dust and other forms of aerosol. The PI recently advanced a generalized theory for these vortices that includes the effect of irreversible thermodynamic processes (tracing to air's viscosity and resulting turbulent losses of momentum) and other sources/sinks of energy. This theory provides a mathematical expression relating pressure and flow speed that sheds new light on their observed intensity and basic structural features, including their tendency to exhibit hollow (or "calm eye") type structure. The PI will direct a full-time graduate student and laboratory technician in the design, fabrication and testing a Prandtl-tube data acquisition system capable of obtaining pressure measurements needed to properly test this theory. This instrument, which will be mounted on a short tower suitable for remote deployment, will simultaneously measure both static and dynamic (stagnation-generated) fluid pressures at required resolution, and will incorporate detection of charged particles that can in turn be linked to the presence of banded flow structures known to occur within some dust-filled circulations.The intellectual merit of this effort derives from improved basic understanding of the dynamics governing rotational atmospheric flows on a wide variety of scales. Broader impacts of this exploratory effort will come primarily through support for education of a graduate student, but could ultimately extend to improved representations of processes responsible for lifting of dust from vast expanses of desert (and associated climate system impacts) to detailed predictions of damaging storms such as thunderstorm-spawned tornadoes.