ENGS 151 Environmental Fluid Mechanics
Applications of fluid mechanics to natural flows of water and air in environmentally relevant systems. The course begins with a review of fundamental fluid physics with emphasis on mass, momentum and energy conservation. These concepts are then utilized to study processes that naturally occur in air and water, such as boundary layers, waves, instabilities, turbulence, mixing, convection, plumes and stratification. The knowledge of these processes is then sequentially applied to the following environmental fluid systems: rivers and streams, wetlands, lakes and reservoirs, estuaries, the coastal ocean, smokestack plumes, urban airsheds, the lower atmospheric boundary layer, and the troposphere. Interactions between air and water systems are also studied in context, e.g. sea breeze in the context of the lower atmospheric boundary layer.