Computational Hydraulics Laboratory

The movement of air and water are fundamental to life on Earth from a planetary to a microscopic scale. How these fluids move, carry nutrients and pollutants, shape our environment, and endanger our habitat and populations is critical to our understanding our environment, our impact on our earth, and ensuring a safe and sustainable environment for all life on our planet.

In our laboratory we study and teach the fundamentals of fluid mechanics. Problems such as irrigation, water supply, fisheries, navigation, port and harbor design, riverine and coastal flooding, wind, wave, and current forces on structures, and sediment movement in rivers and along coasts all require a detailed knowledge of fluid flow. Even within our bodies, fluids carry nutrients, gasses, and harmful chemicals through a complex pump – flow distribution network.

We also study how complex mathematical models in engineering and science can be solved using the ever increasing computational power provided by today’s computers. We live in the information age and we can explore the world around us through computational simulation. We develop an understanding of how discrete mathematics can be applied and implemented on today’s computers systems to solve relevant problems ranging from structural design, flow around a structure, groundwater movement, weather, hurricane storm surge circulation, flow through circulatory systems and through the heart, and the movement of pollutants. We explore both the theory behind these models/codes and how they should be applied and used as well as how to evaluate how accurate the results are through verification, validation and uncertainty quantification.

In our research, we specialize in computationally solving flow and transport problems in the coastal ocean and adjacent inlet, estuarine, riverine, and floodplain systems. This includes topics such as tidal hydrodynamics, hurricane storm surge prediction, wind waves, wave-current interaction, geophysical turbulence modeling, rainfall-runoff modeling, and sediment transport. We also focus on developing unstructured grid algorithms to solve shallow water equations, phase and non-phase resolving waves, Reynolds equations, convection-diffusion equations, and sediment transport equations. We are specifically focused on continuous and discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element solutions, high performance computing and code design, and verification and validation.

2018 New York Behind-the-Scenes Infrastructure - Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, HNTB Design Offices, Severud Associates, Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, Grand Central Terminal - East Side Access, The High Line, Langan, Hudson Yards, WTC