Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory

The EFD laboratories are currently housed in a 6000 sq. ft. area in the Technology Center and the Aerospace Building. The laboratories are located in TC101, TCB209, and TCB211 and the student offices are located in TCB207.

It consists of state-of-the-art environmental flow modeling facilities, such as a 104-ft long wave tank, a recirculating stratified shear flow channel, a stratified shear flow tunnel, a 40 x 1.5 x1 ft. computer-controlled tow tank, an open-loop counter flowing stratified shear flow tunnel, an ice-room to mimic environmental phenomena occurring in polar regions, small wave tanks, facilities for particle dispersion and settling studies, several convection chambers and three computer-controlled rotating tables to simulate the effects of Earth's rotation on fluid motions.

These facilities are instrumented with modern flow diagnostic devices such as back-scatter, fiber-optic and forward -scatter laser Doppler velocimetery systems, digital particle tracking systems, particle-image velocimeter systems, numerous digital image-processing systems, hot-film and hot-wire anemometers, and various high-precision conductivity and temperature sensing devices.

A host of personal computers, an Iris workstation and a state-of-the-art HP workstation provide computer resources to the laboratory.