Environmental Fluid Mechanics

Submerged aquatic vegetation has the potential to greatly improve water quality through the removal of nutrients, particulates and trace metals. The efficiency of this removal depends heavily upon the rate of vertical mixing, which dictates the timescale over which these constituents remain in the canopy. Continuous dye injection experiments were conducted in a flume with model vegetation to characterize vertical mass transport in vegetated shear flows. Through the absorbance-concentration relationship of the Beer-Lambert Law, digital imaging was used to provide high-resolution concentration profiles of the dye plumes. Vertical mass transport is dominated by the coherent vortices of the vegetated shear layers. This is highlighted by the strong periodicity of the transport and its simple characterization based on properties of the shear layer. For example, the vertical turbulent diffusivity is directly proportional to the shear and thickness of the layer. The turbulent diffusivity depends upon the size of the plume, such that the rate of plume growth is lower near the source. In the far-field, mass is mixed more than twice as rapidly as momentum. Finally, plume size is dictated predominantly by X, a dimensionless distance that scales upon the number of vortex rotations experienced by the plume.

Mercury in the aquatic environment is a neurotoxin with several known adverse effects on the natural ecosystem and the human health. Mathematical modeling is a costeffective way for assessing the risk associated with mercury to aquatic organisms and for developing management plans for the reduction of mercury exposure in such systems. However, the analysis of mercury fate and transport in the aquatic environment requires multiple disciplines of science ranging from sediment transport and hydraulics, to geochemistry and microbiology. Also, it involves the knowledge of some less understood processes such as the microbial and diagenetic processes affecting the chemical speciation of mercury and various mechanisms involved in the mass-exchange of mercury species between the benthic sediments and the overlying water. Due to these complexities, there are many challenges involved in developing an integrated mercury fate and transport model in aquatic systems. This paper identifies the various processes that are potentially important in mercury fate and transport as well as the knowns and unknowns about these processes. Also, an integrated multi-component reactive transport modeling approach is suggested to capture several of those processes. This integrated modeling framework includes the coupled advective-dispersive transport of mercury species in the water body, both in dissolved phase and as associated to mobile suspended sediments. The flux of mercury in the benthic sediments as a result of diffusive mass exchange, bio-dispersion, and hyporheic flow, and the flow generated due to consolidation of newly deposited sediments is also addressed. The model considers in addition the deposition and resuspension of sediments and their effect on the mass exchange of mercury species between the top water and the benthic sediments. As for the biogeochemical processes, the effect of redox stratification and activities of sulfate and iron-reducing bacteria on the methylation of mercury is discussed, and the modeling approach is described. Some results for the application of the model to the Colusa Basin Drain in California are presented. At the end of the paper, the shortcomings of our current knowledge in predicting the fate of mercury in water-sediment systems, the potential improvements, and additional complexities required to make the model more realistic, are discussed.

Hydrodynamics of vegetated channels and streams is a rapidly developing research area, and this chapter summarizes the current knowledge considering both aquatic and riparian zones. The benefit of an advanced parameterization of plant morphology and biomechanical properties is highlighted. For this purpose, the response of flexible and foliated plants and plant communities to the flow is illustrated, and advanced models for the determination of drag forces of flexible plants are described. Hydrodynamic processes governing flow patterns in vegetated flows are presented for submerged and emergent conditions considering spatial scales ranging from the leaf to the vegetated reach scale.

The determination of velocity profile in turbulent narrow open channels is a difficult task due to the significant effects of the anisotropic turbulence that involve the Prandtl's second type of secondary flow occurring in the cross section. With these currents the maximum velocity appears below the free surface that is called dip phenomenon. The well-known logarithmic law describes the velocity distribution in the inner region of the turbulent boundary layer but it is not adapted to define the velocity profile in the outer region of narrow channels. This paper relies on an analysis of the Navier-Stokes equations and yields a new formulation of the vertical velocity profile in the center region of steady, fully developed turbulent flows in open channels. This formulation is able to predict time averaged primary velocity in the outer region of the turbulent boundary layer for both narrow and wide open channels. The proposed law is based on the knowledge of the aspect ratio and involves a parameter C Ar depending on the position of the maximum velocity (ξ dip ). ξ dip may be derived, either from measurements or from an empirical equation given in this paper. A wide range of longitudinal velocity profile data for narrow open channels has been used for validating the model. The agreement between the measured and the computed velocities is rather good, despite the simplification used.

Free surface flows in several shallow rectangular basins have been analyzed experimentally, numerically and theoretically. Different geometries, characterized by different widths and lengths, are considered as well as different hydraulic conditions. First, the results of a series of experimental tests are briefly depicted. They reveal that, under clearly identified hydraulic and geometrical conditions, the flow pattern is found to become nonsymmetric, in spite of the symmetrical inflow conditions, outflow conditions and geometry of the basin. This non-symmetric motion results from the growth of small disturbances actually present in the experimental initial and boundary conditions. Second, numerical simulations are conducted based on a depth-averaged approach and a finite volume scheme. The simulation results reproduce the global pattern of the flow observed experimentally and succeed in predicting the stability or instability of a symmetric flow pattern for all tested configurations. Finally, an analytical study provides mathematical insights into the conditions under which the symmetric flow pattern becomes unstable and clarifies the governing physical processes.

Functional morphology and biomechanics seek to reveal the mechanistic bases of organismal functions and the physical principles involved at the phenotype-environment interface. Characterization of fluid flow (air or water) within and around organismal structures is an example of this approach. Digital particle imaging velocimetry (DPIV) has been exploited in a variety of biological systems to visualize fluid flow associated with animal movement. DPIV employs particles suspended in air or water that are illuminated by a laser light sheet and recorded with a high-speed video camera. Software tracks particle movement across a specified number of video frames, generating vector diagrams showing patterns of fluid flow through time. As powerful as DPIV methods are, they are limited in application by the high cost and complexity of the equipment required. In this article, we describe a simple DPIV system that substitutes widely available, inexpensive consumer components for scientific-grade equipment to achieve low cost (o$1,000 total) and high accuracy (total error calculated to be approx. 6%, as compared with 5% in professional systems). We have employed this system successfully in our studies on the fluid dynamics of chemosensory tongue-flicking in snakes. This system can be used for research and teaching in labs that typically cannot afford the expense or commitment of a traditional DPIV apparatus and is particularly suited for obtaining preliminary data required to justify further grant and institutional support. J. Exp. Zool. 31 201 How to cite this article: Ryerson WG, Schwenk K. 2011. A simple, inexpensive system for digital particle image velocimetry (dpiv) in biomechanics. J. Exp. Zool. 31 : .

Due to the lack of data on hydraulic-jump dynamics in very large channels, the present paper describes the main characteristics of the velocity field and turbulence in a large rectangular channel with a width of 4 m. Although a hydraulic jump is always treated as a wave that is transversal to the channel wall, in the case of this study it has a trapezoidal front shape, first starting from a point at the sidewalls and then developing downstream in an oblique manner, finally giving rise to a trapezoidal shape. The oblique wave front may be regarded as a lateral shockwave that arises from a perturbation at a certain point of the lateral wall and travels obliquely toward the centreline of the channel. The experimental work was carried out at the Coastal Engineering Laboratory of the Water Engineering and Chemistry Department of the Technical University of Bari (Italy). In addition to the hydraulic jump formation, a large recirculating flow zone starts to develop from the separating point of the lateral shock wave and a separate boundary layer occurs. Intensive measurements of the streamwise and spanwise flow velocity components along one-half width of the channel were taken using a bidimensional Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV). The water surface elevation was obtained by means of an ultrasonic profiler. Velocity vectors, transversal velocity profiles, turbulence intensities and Reynolds shear stresses were all investigated. The experimental results of the separated boundary layer were compared with numerical predictions and related work presented in literature and showed good agreement. The transversal velocity profiles indicated the presence of adverse pressure gradient zones and the law of the wall appears to govern the region around the separated boundary layer.

Flume experiments were conducted with rigid and flexible model vegetation to study the structure of coherent vortices (a manifestation of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability) and vertical transport in shallow vegetated shear flows. The vortex street in a vegetated shear layer creates a pronounced oscillation in the velocity profile, with the velocity near the top of a model canopy varying by a factor of three during vortex passage. In turn, this velocity oscillation drives the coherent waving of flexible canopies. Relative to flows over rigid vegetation, the oscillation in canopy geometry has the effect of decreasing the amount of turbulent vertical momentum transport in the shear layer. Using a waving plant to determine phase in the vortex cycle, each vortex is shown to consist of a strong sweep at its front (during which the canopy is most deflected), followed by a weak ejection at its rear (when the canopy height is at a maximum). Whereas in unobstructed mixing layers the vortices span the entire layer, they encompass only 70% of the flexibly obstructed shear layer studied here.

In this work the authors describe the main characteristics of the velocity field of hydraulic jumps in a very large channel where lateral shockwaves occur. Experiments were carried out at the Coastal Engineering Laboratory of the Water Engineering and Chemistry Department of the Technical University of Bari (Italy). Extensive flow velocity measurements were investigated in order to have a clearer understanding of both hydraulic jump development and lateral shockwave formation in a very large channel. Eight experiments were performed in a 4 m wide rectangular channel; the experiments differed in the inlet Froude number F 0 and the jump type. Seven tests were carried out with undular jumps and one with a roller jump. The flow velocity and the flow free surface measurements were taken using a two-dimensional Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) and an ultrasonic profiler, respectively. The experimental results can be summarized as follow: (i) the formation of well developed lateral shockwaves similar to those of oblique jumps were observed; (ii) the comparison of the experimental and theoretical data shows that the classic shockwave theory is sufficiently confirmed in the analyzed range of Reynolds number, taking into account the experimental errors and the difference between the theoretical and experimental assumptions; (iii) the transversal flow velocity profiles in the recirculating zone show a good agreement with the numerical simulations presented in literature in the case of a separated turbulent boundary layer over a flat plate. This conclusion enables us to confirm the hypothesis that the lateral shockwaves in the channel are the result of a boundary layer which, as observed, forms on the channel sidewalls.