Examples of superhydrophobic surfaces found in nature such as self-cleaning property of lotus leaf and walking on water ability of water strider have led to an extensive investigation in this area over the past few decades. When a water droplet rests on a textured surface, it may either form a liquid-solid-vapor composite interface by which the liquid droplet partially sits on air pockets or it may wet the surface in which the water replaces the trapped air depending on the surface roughness and the surface chemistry. Super water repellent surfaces have numerous applications in our daily life such as drag reduction, anti-icing, anti-fogging, energy conservation, noise reduction, and self-cleaning. In fact, the same concept could be applied in designing and producing surfaces that repel organic contaminations (e.g. low surface tension liquids). However, superoleophobic surfaces are more challenging to fabricate than superhydrophobic surfaces since the combination of multiscale roughness with re-entrant or overhang structure and surface chemistry must be provided. In this study, simple, cost-effective and potentially scalable techniques, i.e., airbrush and electrospray, were employed for the sake of making superhydrophobic and superoleophobic coatings with random and patterned multiscale surface roughness. Different types of silicon dioxide were utilized in this work to in order to study and to characterize the effect of surface morphology and surface roughness on surface wettability. The experimental findings indicated that super liquid repellent surfaces with high apparent contact angles and extremely low sliding angles were successfully fabricated by combining re-entrant structure, multiscale surface roughness, and low surface energy obtained from chemically treating the fabricated surfaces. In addition to that, the experimental observations regarding producing textured surfaces in mask-assisted electrospray were further validated by simulating the actual working conditions and geometries using COMSOL Multiphysics.

<p>A new theory for predicting the windprofile over a canopy has been evaluated. The theory was first presented by Harman and Finnigan (2007). The theory relies on the forming of a mixing-layer above the canopy, due to different mean wind in and above the canopy. Characteristics from both mixing-layer and Monin Obukhov similarity theory have been used to develop the governingequations that give the wind profile. The theory has been used to calculate wind profiles for sixdifferent atmospheric stabilities. In order to evaluate the theory, profiles from the theory have beencompared to measurements from Jädraås forest, Sweden. Profiles from Monin Obukhov similarity theory were also used for comparison.In general the mixing-layer theory gives better results than Monin Obukhov similarity theory. Agreement with measurements is good in neutral conditions, but fails when the atmospheric stability is altered, especially in convective conditions. This is believed to be due to the canopy lacking in thickness. The mean wind speed is systematically underestimated and this is also believed to be caused by insufficient thickness of the canopy. A correction for this behaviour is proposed. The theory gives higher values of the mean wind speed in convective conditions with the correction and the calculated values of mean wind speed are closer to the measurements.</p>

This thesis investigates the effect of scale on themorphology, mechanics and transmissivity of single rockfractures using both laboratory and in-situ experiments, aswell as numerical simulations. Using a laboratory 3D laserscanner, the surface topography of a large silicon-rubberfracture replica of size 1m x 1m, as well as the topography ofboth surfaces of several high-strength concrete fracturereplicas varying in size from 50mmx50mm to 200mm x 200mm, werescanned. A geodetic Total Station and an in-situ 3D laser radarwere also utilized to scan the surface topography of a largenatural road-cut rock face of size 20m x 15m in the field. Thisdigital characterization of the fracture samples was then usedto investigate the scale dependency of the three dimensionalmorphology of the fractures using a fractal approach. Thefractal parameters of the surface roughness of all fracturesamples, including the geometrical aperture of the concretefracture samples, were obtained using the Roughness-Lengthmethod. The results obtained from the fractal characterization ofthe surface roughness of the fracture samples show that bothfractal dimension, D, and amplitude parameter, A, for aself-affine surface are scale-dependent, heterogeneous andanisotropic, and their values generally decrease withincreasing size of the sample. However, this scale-dependencyis limited to a certain size—defined as the stationaritythreshold, where the surface roughness parameters of thefracture samples remain essentially constant beyond thisstationarity threshold. The surface roughness and thegeometrical aperture of the tested concrete fracture replicasin this study did not reach stationarity due to the structuralnon-stationarity of their surface at small scales. Although theaperture histogram of the fractures was almost independent ofthe sample size, below their stationarity threshold both theHurst exponent, Hb, and aperture proportionality constant, Gb,decrease on increasing the sample sizes. To investigate the scale effect on the mechanical propertiesof single rock fractures, several normal loading and directshear tests were performed on the concrete fracture replicassubjected to different normal stresses under Constant NormalLoad (CNL) conditions. The results showed that both normal andshear stiffnesses, as well as the shear strength parameters ofthe fracture samples, decrease on increasing the sample size.It was observed that the structural non-stationarity of surfaceroughness largely controls the contact areas and damage zoneson the fracture surfaces as related to the direction of theshearing. The aperture maps of the concrete fracture replicas ofvarying size and at different shear displacements, obtainedfrom numerical simulation of the aperture evolution duringshearing using their digitized surfaces, were used toinvestigate the effect of scale on the transmissivity of thesingle rock fractures. A FEM code was utilized to numericallysimulate the fluid flow though the single rock fractures ofvarying size. The results showed that flow rate not onlyincreases on increasing the sample size, but also significantlyincreases in the direction perpendicular to the shearing, dueto the anisotropic roughness of the fractures. <b>Key words:</b>Anisotropy, Aperture, Asperity degradation,Contact area, Finite Element Method (FEM), Flow analysis,Fractals, Fracture morphology, Heterogeneity,Stress-deformation, Surface roughness, Roughness-Length method,Scale dependency, Stationarity, Transmissivity, 3D laserscanner.

The soil-structure interface is fundamental to the performance of many geotechnical engineering systems; including penetration test devices, deep foundations, and retaining structures. In geotechnical engineering structures, the counterface may range from a polymer in the case of a geosynthetically reinforced earth retaining structure to steel for cone penetration testing or pile foundations. Interface strength is affected by many factors, among which surface roughness is the most dominant. To date common practice has been to characterize counterface surface roughness by a roughness parameter based on only its spatial properties and soil roughness separately by various incompatible means resulting in two roughness values unrelated to each other. The vast number of analyzing methods and developed parameters reveal the general confusion regarding this concept. Rather than analyzing the particulate and continuum media separately, it is compulsory to coalesce the analysis and quantify the relative nature of interface behavior. This can be accomplished by examining the particulate and continuum media through the same powerful tools. The motive of this study is to develop a unified approach to determining the index properties of particles and surfaces in a particle-surface interface. This is accomplished by examining several particle shape and surface roughness parameters in terms of their ability to uniquely describe and distinguish particulate medium and continuum roughness, respectively. In this study, surfaces are analyzed as derived particles by wrapping surface profiles and particles are evaluated as derived surfaces via unrolling particle outlines. In addition, particle shape parameters are modified to allow surface roughness analysis and surface roughness parameters are modified to characterize particle shape. A unified approach for particulate shape and continuum roughness would ultimately lead to a better understanding of micro-scale interaction mechanism and better quantification of macro-scale mobilized resistance for soil and engineering surface interaction.

<p>This thesis investigates the effect of scale on themorphology, mechanics and transmissivity of single rockfractures using both laboratory and in-situ experiments, aswell as numerical simulations. Using a laboratory 3D laserscanner, the surface topography of a large silicon-rubberfracture replica of size 1m x 1m, as well as the topography ofboth surfaces of several high-strength concrete fracturereplicas varying in size from 50mmx50mm to 200mm x 200mm, werescanned. A geodetic Total Station and an in-situ 3D laser radarwere also utilized to scan the surface topography of a largenatural road-cut rock face of size 20m x 15m in the field. Thisdigital characterization of the fracture samples was then usedto investigate the scale dependency of the three dimensionalmorphology of the fractures using a fractal approach. Thefractal parameters of the surface roughness of all fracturesamples, including the geometrical aperture of the concretefracture samples, were obtained using the Roughness-Lengthmethod.</p><p>The results obtained from the fractal characterization ofthe surface roughness of the fracture samples show that bothfractal dimension, D, and amplitude parameter, A, for aself-affine surface are scale-dependent, heterogeneous andanisotropic, and their values generally decrease withincreasing size of the sample. However, this scale-dependencyis limited to a certain size—defined as the stationaritythreshold, where the surface roughness parameters of thefracture samples remain essentially constant beyond thisstationarity threshold. The surface roughness and thegeometrical aperture of the tested concrete fracture replicasin this study did not reach stationarity due to the structuralnon-stationarity of their surface at small scales. Although theaperture histogram of the fractures was almost independent ofthe sample size, below their stationarity threshold both theHurst exponent, Hb, and aperture proportionality constant, Gb,decrease on increasing the sample sizes.</p><p>To investigate the scale effect on the mechanical propertiesof single rock fractures, several normal loading and directshear tests were performed on the concrete fracture replicassubjected to different normal stresses under Constant NormalLoad (CNL) conditions. The results showed that both normal andshear stiffnesses, as well as the shear strength parameters ofthe fracture samples, decrease on increasing the sample size.It was observed that the structural non-stationarity of surfaceroughness largely controls the contact areas and damage zoneson the fracture surfaces as related to the direction of theshearing.</p><p>The aperture maps of the concrete fracture replicas ofvarying size and at different shear displacements, obtainedfrom numerical simulation of the aperture evolution duringshearing using their digitized surfaces, were used toinvestigate the effect of scale on the transmissivity of thesingle rock fractures. A FEM code was utilized to numericallysimulate the fluid flow though the single rock fractures ofvarying size. The results showed that flow rate not onlyincreases on increasing the sample size, but also significantlyincreases in the direction perpendicular to the shearing, dueto the anisotropic roughness of the fractures.</p><p><b>Key words:</b>Anisotropy, Aperture, Asperity degradation,Contact area, Finite Element Method (FEM), Flow analysis,Fractals, Fracture morphology, Heterogeneity,Stress-deformation, Surface roughness, Roughness-Length method,Scale dependency, Stationarity, Transmissivity, 3D laserscanner.</p>

Surfaces are rough, unless special care is taken to make them atomically smooth. Roughness exists at all scales, and any surface-producing operation affects the roughness in certain degrees, specific to the production process. When two surfaces are brought close to each other, contact is established at many isolated locations. The number and size of these contact islands depend on the applied load, material properties of the surfaces and the nature of roughness. These contact islands affect the tribological properties of the contacting surfaces. The real contact area, which is the sum total of the area of contacting islands, is much smaller than the apparent contact area dictated by the macroscopic geometry of the contacting surfaces. Since the total load is supported by these contact islands, the local contact pressure will be very high, and dependent on the local microscopic geometry of the roughness. Thus understanding the deformation behaviour of the rough surfaces will lead to better understanding of friction and wear properties of the surfaces. In this work, the interaction of these contact islands with each other is studied when two surfaces are in contact and sliding past each other. Asperities can be thought of as basic units of roughness. The geometry and the distribution of heights of asperities can be used to define the roughness. For example, one of the earliest models of roughness is that of hemispherical asperities carrying smaller hemispherical asperities on their back, which in turn carry smaller asperities, and soon. In the present study the asperities are assumed to be of uniform size, shape and distribution. Normal and tangential loading response of these asperities with a rigid indenter is studied through elastic-plastic plane strain finite element studies. As a rigid indenter is loaded onto a surface with a regular array of identical asperities, initial contact is established at a single asperity. The plastic zone is initially confined within the asperity. When the load is increased ,the elastic-plastic boundary moves towards the free surface of the asperity, and the contact pressure decreases. The geometry and spacing are determined when the neighbouring asperities come into contact. The plastic zone in these asperities is constrained, and hence contact pressure sustained by these asperities is larger. As the indentation progresses, more asperities come into contact in a similar way. If a tangential displacement is now applied to the indenter, the von Mises stress contours shift in the direction of indenter displacement. As the tangential displacement increases, the number of asperities in contact with the indenter decreases gradually before reaching a steady sliding state. The tangential sliding force experienced by the indenter arises from two components. One is the frictional resistance between the contacting surfaces and the other is due to the plastic deformation of the substrate. If the surface is completely elastic, it has been seen that the sliding force is purely due to the specified friction coefficient. For the smooth surface, as the subsurface makes the transition from purely elastic to confined plastic zone, plasticity breaks out on the free surface, hence the sliding force increases. For surfaces with asperities, even at very small load, the asperities deform plastically and hence the sliding force is considerably higher. The frictional force is experimentally measured by sliding a spherical indenter on smooth and rough surfaces. These experimental results are qualitatively compared with two dimensional finite element results. It has been observed that for rough surface, sliding force is considerablyhigherthanthesmoothsurface,asisobservedinsimu-lations at lower loads. In contrast to the simulations, the sliding force decreases at higher loads for both the smooth and rough surfaces.

A new theory for predicting the windprofile over a canopy has been evaluated. The theory was first presented by Harman and Finnigan (2007). The theory relies on the forming of a mixing-layer above the canopy, due to different mean wind in and above the canopy. Characteristics from both mixing-layer and Monin Obukhov similarity theory have been used to develop the governingequations that give the wind profile. The theory has been used to calculate wind profiles for sixdifferent atmospheric stabilities. In order to evaluate the theory, profiles from the theory have beencompared to measurements from Jädraås forest, Sweden. Profiles from Monin Obukhov similarity theory were also used for comparison.In general the mixing-layer theory gives better results than Monin Obukhov similarity theory. Agreement with measurements is good in neutral conditions, but fails when the atmospheric stability is altered, especially in convective conditions. This is believed to be due to the canopy lacking in thickness. The mean wind speed is systematically underestimated and this is also believed to be caused by insufficient thickness of the canopy. A correction for this behaviour is proposed. The theory gives higher values of the mean wind speed in convective conditions with the correction and the calculated values of mean wind speed are closer to the measurements.

Modeling the effects of surface roughness is an area of concern in many practical engineering applications. Many current roughness models to this point have involved the use of empirical 'constants' and equivalent sand grain roughness. These underdeveloped concepts have little direct relationship to realistic roughness and cannot predict accurately and consistently the flow characteristics for different roughness shapes. In order to aid in the development of turbulence models, the present research is centered around the experimental investigation of seven various shaped single roughness elements and their effects on turbulence quantities in a two-dimensional turbulent boundary layer. The elements under scrutiny are as follows: cone, cone with spatial variations equal to the smallest sublayer structure length scale, cone with spatial variations equal to 2.5 times the smallest sublayer structure length scale, Gaussian-shaped element, hemisphere, cube aligned perpendicular to the flow (cube at 90&#176;), and a cube rotated 45&#176; relative to the flow. The roughness element heights, k+, non-dimensionalized by the friction velocity (U_tau) of the approaching turbulent boundary layer, are 145, 145, 145, 145, 80, 98, and 98 respectively. Analysis of a three-dimensional fetch of the same Gaussian-shaped elements described previously was also undertaken. In order to analyze the complex flow fields, detailed measurements were obtained using a fine-measurement-volume (50 micron diameter) three-velocity component laser-Doppler velocimetry (LDV) system. The data reveals the formation of a horseshoe vortex in front of the element, which induces the downwash of higher momentum fluid toward the wall. This 'sweep' motion not only creates high Reynolds stresses (v^2, w^2, -uv) downstream of the element, but also leads to higher skin-friction drag. Triple products were also found to be very significant near the height of the element. These parameters are important in regards to the contribution of the production and diffusion of the turbulent kinetic energy in the flow. The 'peakiness' of the roughness element was found to have a direct correlation to the production of circulation, whereas the spatial smoothing does not have an immense effect on this parameter. The peaked elements were found to have a similar trend in the decay of circulation in the streamwise direction. These elements tend to show a decay proportional to (x/d)^-1.12, whereas the cube elements and the hemisphere do not have a common trend. A model equation is proposed for a drag correlation common to all roughness elements. This equation takes into account the viscous drag and pressure drag terms in the calculation of the actual drag due to the roughness elements presence in the boundary layer. The size, shape, frontal and wetted surface areas of the roughness elements are related to one another via this model equation. Flow drawings related to each element are presented which gives rise to a deeper understanding of the physics of the flow associated with each roughness element. / Master of Science

This dissertation investigates the use of remotely sensed data in coastal tide and inundation models, specifically how these data could be more effectively integrated into model construction and performance assessment techniques. It includes a review of numerical wetting and drying algorithms, a method for constructing a seamless digital terrain model including the handling of tidal datums, an investigation into the accuracy of land use / land cover (LULC) based surface roughness parameterization schemes, an application of a cutting edge remotely sensed inundation detection method to assess the performance of a tidal model, and a preliminary investigation into using 3-dimensional airborne laser scanning data to parameterize surface roughness. A thorough academic review of wetting and drying algorithms employed by contemporary numerical tidal models was conducted. Since nearly all population centers and valuable property are located in the overland regions of the model domain, the coastal models must adequately describe the inundation physics here. This is accomplished by techniques that generally fall into four categories: Thin film, Element removal, Depth extrapolation, and Negative depth. While nearly all wetting and drying algorithms can be classified as one of the four types, each model is distinct and unique in its actual implementation. The use of spatial elevation data is essential to accurate coastal modeling. Remotely sensed LiDAR is the standard data source for constructing topographic digital terrain models (DTM). Hydrographic soundings provide bathymetric elevation information. These data are combined to form a seamless topobathy surface that is the foundation for distributed coastal models. A three-point inverse distance weighting method was developed in order to account for the spatial variability of bathymetry data referenced to tidal datums. This method was applied to the Tampa Bay region of Florida in order to produce a seamless topobathy DTM. Remotely sensed data also contribute to the parameterization of surface roughness. It is used to develop land use / land cover (LULC) data that is in turn used to specify spatially distributed bottom friction and aerodynamic roughness parameters across the model domain. However, these parameters are continuous variables that are a function of the size, shape and density of the terrain and above-ground obstacles. By using LULC data, much of the variation specific to local areas is generalized due to the categorical nature of the data. This was tested by comparing surface roughness parameters computed based on field measurements to those assigned by LULC data at 24 sites across Florida. Using a t-test to quantify the comparison, it was proven that the parameterizations are significantly different. Taking the field measured parameters as ground truth, it is evident that parameterizing surface roughness based on LULC data is deficient. In addition to providing input parameters, remotely sensed data can also be used to assess the performance of coastal models. Traditional methods of model performance testing include harmonic resynthesis of tidal constituents, water level time series analysis, and comparison to measured high water marks. A new performance assessment that measures a model's ability to predict the extent of inundation was applied to a northern Gulf of Mexico tidal model. The new method, termed the synergetic method, is based on detecting inundation area at specific points in time using satellite imagery. This detected inundation area is compared to that predicted by a time-synchronized tidal model to assess the performance of model in this respect. It was shown that the synergetic method produces performance metrics that corroborate the results of traditional methods and is useful in assessing the performance of tidal and storm surge models. It was also shown that the subject tidal model is capable of correctly classifying pixels as wet or dry on over 85% of the sample areas. Lastly, since it has been shown that parameterizing surface roughness using LULC data is deficient, progress toward a new parameterization scheme based on 3-dimensional LiDAR point cloud data is presented. By computing statistics for the entire point cloud along with the implementation of moving window and polynomial fit approaches, empirical relationships were determined that allow the point cloud to estimate surface roughness parameters. A multi-variate regression approach was chosen to investigate the relationship(s) between the predictor variables (LiDAR statistics) and the response variables (surface roughness parameters). It was shown that the empirical fit is weak when comparing the surface roughness parameters to the LiDAR data. The fit was improved by comparing the LiDAR to the more directly measured source terms of the equations used to compute the surface roughness parameters. Future work will involve using these empirical relationships to parameterize a model in the northern Gulf of Mexico and comparing the hydrodynamic results to those of the same model parameterized using contemporary methods. In conclusion, through the work presented herein, it was demonstrated that incorporating remotely sensed data into coastal models provides many benefits including more accurate topobathy descriptions, the potential to provide more accurate surface roughness parameterizations, and more insightful performance assessments. All of these conclusions were achieved using data that is readily available to the scientific community and, with the exception of the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) from the Radarsat-1 project used in the inundation detection method, are available free of charge. Airborne LiDAR data are extremely rich sources of information about the terrain that can be exploited in the context of coastal modeling. The data can be used to construct digital terrain models (DTMs), assist in the analysis of satellite remote sensing data, and describe the roughness of the landscape thereby maximizing the cost effectiveness of the data acquisition.

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