Lectures
will be twice per week, for a total of 3 hours.
The
instructor will be Dr. Iakov Afanassiev
Telephone: (709) 864-2500
Office: C-4065
Lab:1046
Email: afanai@mun.ca
http://www.physics.mun.ca/~yakov
Moving
fluids are a part of the natural world, and their dynamics impact the ocean and
atmosphere as well as many other problems of science and engineering. Fluid
processes are complex (the equations of motion are three-dimensional, unsteady
and nonlinear) and the theory is sufficiently incomplete. Many natural
processes occur over too large a scale in time and space (ten orders of
magnitude in length-scale variations for the flows in the ocean) so that even
the most advanced computer models cannot adequately describe real systems.
Laboratory experiments are a great way to learn about fluids and provide an
invaluable research tool to link theory and observations.
Laboratory
work involves many skills: understanding how to scale real phenomena to the
laboratory, building apparatus, observing experiments, visualization, digital
photography and data analysis including image analysis. The objective of this
course is to give the student the theoretical basis of the laboratory
experimentation in GFD through lectures as well as practical skills.� This
will include the development and implementation of your own fluid dynamics
experiment to study a problem that interests you, the results of which will be
reported in a paper and video which you will create.
The course
will consist of lectures (some with lab demonstrations) and practical work on
your project of choice in the laboratory.
B. Cushman-Roisin.
1994. Introduction to Geophysical Fluid Dynamics. Prentice
Hall, Engelwood Cliffs, 320 p.
S.I. Voropayev and Y. Afanasyev .1994. Vortex Structures
in a Stratified Fluid. Chapman and Hall, London, 230 p.
The topics
of lectures are outlined below.
There will
be a few lectures with the laboratory demonstrations. These lectures will take
place in the lab rather than in a regular class room.
There
will be several assignments which involve reading an assigned research article,
preparing a “digest” of the paper and presenting it in class. The assignments
will be worth 30% of your final mark.
In the term
project you will model experimentally a simplified real-world problem. The
ultimate goal of your project is to produce a comprehensive report describing
your project including background information, photographs/movies and
references. We can suggest a project for you, or you can come up with your own.
Since the project will take a substantial amount of time and effort and may
require building an apparatus in advance, we suggest that you keep it in mind
as we go through the material. Selection of the project should be made before
the sixth week of the term so that you can begin to prepare. I would like to
meet with each of you individually to discuss your interests and explore
possible projects. We will then have informal follow up meetings to discuss
practical aspects of your project and to make sure you have the equipment you
need to get going. A 10 min presentation of your research plan will be given at
the first class in week eight. In this presentation you will describe why this
research topic is important, previous studies (you have to conduct literature
search), what are you going to do and by what experimental means. This
preliminary presentation will worth 10 % of your final mark. You will start
working on your project in the laboratory with the help of the instructor by
the ninth week of the term. You should give the final 20 min presentation in
class (last week of classes). This presentation should follow the form of a
research talk and will be worth 15 % of your final mark. You should also submit
the research paper at this time. The paper should follow a format required for
research papers in one of the journal in the field (JPO, JFM, PhysFluids). The paper is the most
important component of this course and will be worth 40 % of your final mark. The
last part of the final project report includes the project video (Youtube style) where you present your project for a wider
audience in order to promote your work. The video will be worth 15% of your
mark.
The
possible ideas for the projects are given below.
Eddies, zonal jets and Rossby waves on the polar beta-plane
Inertial waves on the f-plane
Baroclinic instability, frontal instability
Vortex dipoles in
rotating/stratified fluid
Flow over topography in a rotating
fluid (f-plane, beta-plane)
Tornadoes
Assignments 20 %
Preliminary presentation 10 %
Project video 15 %
Project paper 40%
Final presentation 15 %