Gravity and Turbidity Currents Interacting With Submarine Topography

Lorenz G. Straub Award Ceremony

Eckart Meiburg
Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Fluids
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Santa Barbara

Abstract

We will present an overview of high-resolution, Navier-Stokes based simulations of gravity and turbidity currents. The turbidity currents are driven by particles that have negligible inertia and are much smaller than the smallest length scales of the buoyancy-induced fluid motion. For the mathematical description of the particulate phase an Eulerian approach is employed, with a transport equation for the particle-number density. We will discuss differences between two- and three-dimensional turbidity current dynamics, and we will introduce some effects due to complex topography. Results will be shown regarding the unsteady interaction of a gravity current with a submarine structure, such as a pipeline. Furthermore, we will discuss the linear stability problem of channel and sediment wave formation by turbidity currents.