Tag Archives: sediment transport

Dispersal and transport of oil droplets

Our staff have been consulted on projects involving modeling and remediation of environmental disasters.  One of our recent projects involved understanding the dispersal and transport mechanism of oil droplets resulting from a major oil spill into a Midwestern waterway.  We obtained oil samples from the same oil that contaminated the river and using specialized equipment measured the oil droplet breakdown and resulting size distribution of particles.  This was coupled with a computational model that simulated the transport of oil droplets throughout a river system including dispersal and deposit within a lake.  Also simulated was the effect of a dam on halting the transport of the oil droplets.

As a part of this project a specialized sediment trap was developed in-house for acquiring contaminated sediment and water.  The samples were used to compare against simulation results for calibration.

Modeling of river hydrodynamics

Many of the consulting services the lab is utilized for is modeling hydrodynamics and water quality of waterways.  Our staff have extensive experience in modeling studies, including studies done in Chicago, Kansas, New Jersey, California, Argentina, Costa Rica, and other locations domestic and internationally.  Sediment transport is one of our specialties.  In the picture above, results from a computational fluid dynamics simulation indicated extensive transport of polluted sediment from a tributary into a main channel of a river.

We specialize in the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Code (EFDC) as well as Telemac, Fluent, FLOW-3D, HEC-RAS, and WASP.