Environmental fluid mechanics can be defined succinctly as the study of naturally occurring fluid flows in Earth's atmosphere and hydrosphere. The key questions in this broad and important area in fluid mechanics focus on how fluids move constituents through our natural environment. A defining characteristic of many environmental flows is density stratification which arises due to temperature and/or salinity variations. Understanding how turbulence and stratification interact with each other is a fundamental issue and provides the key to enhancing our ability to predict how mixing and transport occurs in the natural environment. In this talk, an overview on the application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in environmental flows will be presented. Three different research problems will be discussed to highlight the use of direct numerical simulations (DNS) and large-eddy simulations (LES) in studying research problems ranging from the laborarory scale to the field scale. The examples will focus on the following topics:
- Stably stratified turbulent flows
- Internal waves in the coastal ocean
- Plume dispersion in coastal and estuarine flows
Dr. Venayagamoorthy is an assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University. He received his BScEng and MScEng degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa and his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. His research interests focus on environmental fluid mechanics, geophysical fluid dynamics, hydraulics and hydrology using computational flow modeling in combination with theoretical and experimental methods.
