Stanford University
Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
 
Yang & Yamazaki
Environment & Energy Building

473 Via Ortega
Stanford, CA 94305
650 723-4372 ph, 650 725-9720 fax
efml hyphen information at stanford dot edu
 
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Research

The Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory is the centerpiece for research and teaching activities in experimental and computational fluid mechanics. The Laboratory was formerly known as the Hydraulics Laboratory and was renamed the EFML in 1986 to more accurately reflect the research interests of the faculty. Professor Robert Street was the Director of the EFML from 1986 to 1991, Professor Jeffrey Koseff from 1991-1996, and Professor Stephen Monismith has been the Director since 1996. At this time, the current research is focused on turbulence and mixing in natural water bodies, stratified flows in lakes, reservoirs, estuaries, and coastal seas, natural and forced convection flows in energy systems, energy and mass transfer across the ocean-atmosphere interface, simulation of mesoscale phenomena in the oceans and surface layers of the atmosphere, and transport and mixing of pollutants at regional and global scales in the atmosphere.

The EFML currently has six major experimental research facilities of which five have been built in the past eight years. These include a rotating table facility for studying geophysical flows and a flume for studying the hydrodynamics of feeding by benthic bivalves (clams). The research activities in this flume reflect the ever-growing interest in biological fluid mechanics in the EFML. Even though the program in biological fluid mechanics was only established six years ago it is already regarded as one of the leading programs of its type in the country. In addition, the EFML boasts absolutely superb computing resources, including a recently purchased CRAY mini-supercomputer and Silicon Graphics workstations, and a state-of-the-art measurement capability, some of the equipment being procured and some developed by the laboratory staff, faculty and students.

 

 

 

 

Building on the pioneering work of Professors En Yun Hsu and Robert Street on wind-generated water waves, the research program has recently added a new thrust in the atmospheric sciences with the hiring of Professor Mark Jacobson from UCLA. The intent is that Jacobson will combine his expertise in the modeling of atmospheric pollutants with current expertise in hydrodynamic modeling in the EFML to produce coupled atmospheric-ocean transport models. This thrust, together with that in biological fluid mechanics, has positioned the faculty in the EFML to provide leadership to the civil engineering community well into the 21st century.

The research activities of the EFML are described below. They span the range from the clouds to the seas and from rigorously fundamental to applied research. At this time there are four tenured or tenure-track faculty from civil engineering in the laboratory, with four other associated faculty from mechanical engineering, computer science, earth science and biological sciences, respectively. There are two postdoctoral scholars, 25 graduate students studying for their doctorates, and one other graduate student who use the laboratory for their research.

An Experiment to Measure the Mixing Efficiency and Fine-Scale Structure in a Breaking Internal Wave - Koseff, J.R. and Troy, C. (NSF)

The Hydrodynamics of Phytoplankton Removal in Benthic Boundary Layers by Suspension - Feeding Bivalves - Monismith, S. G. and Koseff, J. R. (NSF)

A Study of the Structure of the Near-Coastal Zone Water Column using Numerical Simulations - Koseff, J. R., Ferziger, J. H., and Monismith, S. G. (ONR)

The dynamics of turbulence and vorticity under breaking waves - Monismith, S.G. (NSF)

 

 

 

A Study of the Structure of Stratified Tidal Flows - Monismith, S.G. (NSF)

Modeling and Field Studies of Chemical Plumes in Benthic Boundary Layers - Monismith, S.G. and J.R. Koseff (ONR)

Circulation Modeling of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta - Monismith, S.G. (unsponsored)

Hydrodynamic Interactions between Olfactory Appendages and Odor Plumes - Koseff, J.R. (ONR).

Characterization and Modeling of Plumes and Animal Plume-Tracing in Wave-Influenced Coastal Environments - Koseff, J.R. and S. G. Monismith (ONR).


Boundary Layer Mixing and Circulation Over Rough Topography: Flow Over Coral Reefs. – Monismith, S.G., A. Genin (Hebrew University), J.R. Koseff, M.A. Reidenbach (Bi-National Science Foundation)

A Laboratory Study of Fine-Scale Mixing and Mass Transport Above a Coral Reef – Koseff, J.R., M. Koehl (U.C. Berkeley), M.A. Reidenbach (NSF)


Hydrodynamics and transport in a Giant Kelp forest -- Johanna Rosman, Jeff Koseff, Stephen Monismith (NSF)

Small-scale flow variability inside branched coral colonies: computations and experimental verification. NSF. Monismith S.G., Eaton J.K., Koseff J.R. and Chang S.

Coherent structures in rivers and estuaries. (DoD) -- Fong, Fringer, Monismith, and Street in collaboration with University of Washington)

Studies of flow and turbulent mixing over complex terrain - Street, R., Ludwig, F. & Chow, F. (NSF)

ROMS and SUNTANS Continued Development and Support of AESOP and NLIWI - Fringer, O., Street, R., Gerritsen, M. (ONR)

Simulation of Benthic Ripples and Transport Processes for SAX - Fringer, O., Street, R. (ONR)