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Undergraduate Admissions

Geophysical Fluid Dynamics

• Location: Room OB17, Basement, Kathleen Lonsdale Building
• Telephone Extension: 32410
• Laboratory Manager: Dr Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni
  

The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory is a state of the art facility for the joint visualization of velocity and temperature of viscous flow, boasting unique custom made automated equipment for 3-D imaging and advanced software for data acquisition and post-processing. We are focused on Earth and planetary scale problems.

SPIVET

The automated system is a custom designed and built motion control system of a camera member with two 3-chip CCD cameras in a stereoscopic arrangement and of a fiber optic halogen lightline with a positional accuracy and repeatability better than 4 microns. The illumination of many planes of a given volume allows for 3-D particle image velocimetry (PIV) and thermometry (PIT) with liquid crystals. The system is controlled by open-source custom software written in visual basic that controls automatic data acquisition in situ and remotely. Data acquisition is fast and reliable. Post-processing with a novel hybrid PTV/PIV algorithm produce highly accurate velocity images. TLC measurements are complemented by a finite-volume solver of the temperature field given the measured velocities.