Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Coastal Engineering

Graduate study in Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Coastal Engineering offers education and research opportunities in many physical processes of water flow essential to the understanding, protection and improvement of the environment. The program emphasizes theoretical and experimental inquiries in both the laboratory and the field, and the development of models and strategies for practice. Interaction of physical processes with chemical and biological processes is also stressed.

Faculty

E. Eric Adams, Senior Research Engineer and Lecturer
Ole S. Madsen, Professor
Chiang C. Mei, Professor
Heidi M. Nepf, Professor
Roman Stocker, Associate Professor

Representative Research Areas

• Fluid dynamics at the scale of microorganisms
• Impact of aquatic vegetation on flow and transport in surface water systems
• Wetland-lake interaction with implications for lake water quality
• Interaction between waves and aquatic vegetation
• Sediment transport processes in coastal waters due to waves and currents
• Combined effects of waves and currents on bottom boundary layer flows
• Modeling hydrodynamics and sediment transport processes in the surf zone
• Mathematical and physical modeling of multiphase plumes
• Fluid mechanics of ocean carbon dioxide sequestration
• Experimental study of reservoir destratification
• Coastal circulation and water quality modeling
• Nonlinear dynamics of surface waves
• Wave structure interactions and the proposed storm gates for the Venice Lagoon
• Environmental microfluidics
• Biological transport and ecological processes at the microscale

Research Projects