The fluids-transport lab is designed to flexibly accommodate new, as well as ongoing, experiments motivated by pure inspiration as much as by specific hypothesis testing.  Propose something.  We'll figure out a way of examinig it experimentally.   Oh... and likely we'll involve cool high-tech visualization and imaging.  Current projects are centered on magma and coupled magma-particle dynamics, interactions between river bars and vegetation, transport of soil particles by rainsplash, and the hydrodynamics of sand dollars in oscillatory and unidirectional flows.

Fluids

Our current work involves experiments to clarify how hydrodynamic forces influence the behavior and stability of sand dollars, scaled physical models of magma transport, and coupled magma-particle dynamics.  Facilities include tanks for the sand-dollar experiments as well as particle-settling experiments, a small Couette flow apparatus for demonstrating particle segregation during shear, and a special tank (see image) for mimicking gravity-driven intrusion of a dense fluid into a less-dense host fluid.

Sediment

Jeff Warburton (University of Durham, England) helped us set up this small (2.5 m), but lovely, stream table to conduct scaled experiments of the interactions between bar evolution and the transport, deposition, burial and exhumation of large tree stems in braided rivers.  The work of Nichole Knepprath (graduate student) and Professor Molly Miller on both ancient and modern systems suggests that these interactions – how large tree stems become oriented relative to mean flow – are statistically predictable.

Instrumentation

Some of our experiments involve visualization techniques to reveal flow and transport behavior.  In addition to using standard techinques (e.g. dyes, particle tracking, etc.), we have both lapse-rate and high-speed digital cameras that are controlled by a high-performance work station.  Lapse-rate imaging is particularly useful for examining the slow viscous flows in our physical models of magmas and particle behavior.  High-speed imaging (left) is particularly useful in our studies of rainsplash transport of soil particles.

In addition, we have a variety of instruments for use in our field studies of hillslope and river processes, including surveying equipment and water chemisty probes.