Transport and mixing of particles in stratified environmental flows
Principal Investigator: Mathew Wells
Department: Physical & Environmental Sciences
Grant Names: NSERC ; Discovery Grant ;
Award Years: 2016 to 2021
Summary:
My research program will focus on how turbulence and density stratification in lakes and the ocean influences the transport of particles. I will focus on three sub-projects that will study fundamental physical processes that are relevant to a broad interdisciplinary cross-section of geologists, limnologists, oceanographers and aquatic ecologists:
1) Modelling geological sediment deposition patterns under the influence of Coriolis forces. We will develop new process models for the evolution of contourites, which are large-scale sediment deposits in the ocean. We will determine how the morphology of contourite deposits is influenced by the speed of the contour currents. We will critically examine existing conceptual models of contourite stratigraphy, and determine when sediment patterns can be used to infer the magnitude of paleo-ocean currents.
2) Understanding how double diffusive convection can increase sedimentation rates from river plumes. Our new experiments will use acoustic velocimetry to gain an unprecedented view of the fluid dynamics in the optically opaque suspend sediment layer. Our new experiments will be used to validate direct numerical simulations, and to help interpret new field observations.
3) Transport and fate of microplastic pollution in turbulent, stratified water bodies Micro-plastic particles have emerged as a new form of pollution in many water bodies. The specific question we will address is how does environmental turbulence in a lake's surface influence the vertical and horizontal distribution of buoyant micro-plastic particles. The outcome of this project will be a better conceptual idea of how currents in the Great Lakes transport micro-plastic particles.
Our experiments using the largest rotating platform in world are described at https://www.euhit.org/projects/CREST with videos at https://youtu.be/KJ4hyGuEBq4
Our first results are published in https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL069547 and videos of the process are at https://youtu.be/LvnGvyXpNe0