stratified flows @ Berkeley

Welcome to the stratified flows group at UC Berkeley!

A lot of flows in the ocean and atmosphere around us are stratified or buoyancy-driven – that is, they are strongly affected by differences in density (because of heat and salt, for example). In our group, we study the fluid dynamics of these types of flows: how do they become unstable? what types of waves are present? what makes them become turbulent, and how much mixing and entrainment happens as a result? These questions are important in a lot of real-world processes, for example ocean mixing. In general, we study these problems using a mixture of numerical simulations, theory, and comparison with observational measurements.

We are part of the fluids/ocean research area in the Berkeley ME department, and we are part of the broader Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology group (together with other researchers based mostly in civil & environmental engineering).