The theory of Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS) enables prediction of material transport by turbulent winds, such as those observed in the Earth's Atmospheric Boundary Layer. In this dissertation, both theory and experimental methods are developed for utilizing small fixed-wing unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in detecting these atmospheric coherent structures. The dissertation begins by presenting relevant literature on both LCS and airborne wind estimation. Because model-based wind estimation inherently depends on high quality models, a Flight Dynamic Model (FDM) suitable for a small fixed-wing aircraft in turbulent wind is derived in detail. In this presentation, some new theoretical concepts are introduced concerning the proper treatment of spatial wind gradients, and a critical review of existing theories is presented. To enable model-based wind estimation experiments, an experimental approach is detailed for identifying a FDM for a small UAS by combining existing computational aerodynamic and data-driven approaches. Additionally, a methodology for determining wind estimation error directly resulting from dynamic modeling choices is presented and demonstrated. Next, some model-based wind estimation results are presented utilizing the experimentally identified FDM, accompanied by a discussion of model fidelity concerns and other experimental issues. Finally, an algorithm for detecting LCS from a single circling fixed-wing UAS is developed and demonstrated in an Observing System Simulation Experiment. The dissertation concludes by summarizing these contributions and recommending future paths for continuing research. / Doctor of Philosophy / In a natural or man-made disaster, first responders depend on accurate predictions of where the wind might carry hazardous material. A mathematical theory of Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS) has shown promise in ocean environments to improve these predictions, and the theory is also applicable to atmospheric flows near the Earth’s surface. This dissertation presents both theoretical and experimental research efforts towards employing small fixed-wing unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to detect coherent structures in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL). These UAS fit several “gaps” in available sensing technology: a small aircraft responds significantly to wind gusts, can be steered to regions of interest, and can be flown in dangerous environments without risking the pilot’s safety. A key focus of this dissertation is to improve the quality of airborne wind measurements provided by inexpensive UAS, specifically by leveraging mathematical models of the aircraft. The dissertation opens by presenting the motivation for this research and existing literature on the topics. Next, a detailed derivation of a suitable Flight Dynamic Model (FDM) for a fixed-wing aircraft in a turbulent wind field is presented. Special attention is paid to the theories for including aerodynamic effects of flying in non-uniform winds. In preparation for wind measurement experiments, a practical method for obtaining better quality FDMs is presented which combines theoretically based and data-driven approaches. A study into the wind-measurement error incurred solely by mathematical modeling is presented, focusing on simplified forms of the FDM which are common in aerospace engineering. Wind estimates which utilize our best available model are presented, accompanied by discussions of the model accuracy and additional wind measurement concerns. A method is developed to detect coherent structures from a circling UAS which is providing wind information, presumably via accurate model based estimation. The dissertation concludes by discussing these conclusions and directions for future research which have been identified during these pursuits.

Time varying flow structures are involved in a large percentage of fluid flows although there is still much unknown regarding their behavior. With the development of high spatiotemporal resolution measurement systems it is becoming more feasible to measure these complex flow structures, which in turn will lead to a better understanding of their impact. One method that has been developed for studying these flow structures is finite time Lyapunov exponents (FTLEs). These exponents can reveal regions in the fluid, referred to as Lagragnian coherent structures (LCSs), where fluid elements diverge or attract. Better knowledge of how these time varying structures behave can greatly impact a wide range of applications, from aircraft design and performance, to an improved understanding of mixing and transport in the human body. This work provides the development of new methodologies for measuring and studying three-dimensional time varying structures. Provided herein is a method to improve replacement of erroneous measurements in particle image velocimetry data, which leads to increased accuracy in the data. Also, a method for directly measuring the finite time Lyapunov exponents from particle images is developed, as well as an experimental demonstration in a three-dimensional flow field. This method takes advantage of the information inherently contained in these images to improve accuracy and reduce computational requirements. Lastly, this work provides an in depth look at the flow field for developing wall jets across a wide range of Reynolds numbers investigating the mechanisms that contribute to their development. / Ph. D.

Nesta tese foi estudado o transporte de partículas na borda do plasma confinado magneticamente em tokamaks a partir de um modelo para ondas de deriva proveniente de flutuaçõoes eletrostáticas geradas pela não uniformidade do plasma. Para investigar esse problema, consideramos o modelo com duas ondas de deriva, que possui uma complexa dinâmica não linear onde podemos encontrar tanto transporte anômalo quanto transporte difusivo. Para a encontras no plano de fases as Estruturas Lagrangianas Coerentes (ELCs) e os jatos, foram confeccionados mapas de Poincaré, diagramas de expoente de Lyapunov a tempo finito, diagramas de deslocamento quadrático, diagramas de autocorrelação da velocidade e o diagrama de retorno. Para avaliar o impacto dessas ELCs no transporte de partículas foram analisados a série temporal do desvio padrão médio, da dispersão relativa e dos saltos dentro do mapa de Poincar´e e também foram confeccionados histogramas com a distribuição desses saltos. Foi encontrado que, com duas ondas de deriva e para uma determinada combinação de parâmetros, surgem correntes de jato, que persistem por longos períodos, imersas na região caótica. Verificamos que, assim como nas ilhas, a região interna às correntes de jato são inacessíveis às ELCs. Também foi encontrado que, quando existe uma corrente de jato, o transporte observado na região caótica não é simétrico com uma pequena deriva na direção contraria ao jato. Esse fenômeno observado ocorre em contrapartida ao caso típico de sistemas com mistura em que as ELCs tem acesso a todo o plano de fase e o transporte é difusivo. / In this thesis we studied the particle transport in the edge of magnetically confined plasma in tokamaks using a model of drift waves due to electrostatic fluctuations generated by the non-uniformity of the plasma. To investigate this issue, we consider the model with two drift waves, which has a complex nonlinear dynamics where we can find both anomalous and diffusive transport. To find the Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) and the jets, we used Poincaré maps, Finite time Lyapunov exponent diagrams, quadratic displacement diagrams, autocorrelation velocity diagrams and return displacement diagram. To evaluate the impact of LCSs in the transport of particles, we analyzed the time series of both average standard deviation and relative dispertion and also histograms of the distribution of these jumps. It was found that, with two drift waves and for a given combination of parameters, a jet streams appear in the phase space and persist for long periods of time immersed in the chaotic region. We found that, as well as on the islands, the inner region of the jet streams are inaccessible to LCSs. It was also found that when there is a jet stream, the transport observed in the chaotic region is not symmetrical and have a small drift in the opposite direction to the jet. This phenomenon is observed in contrast to the typical case of systems with mixing in wich the LCSs have access to all the phase space and the trasnport is diffusive.

The Lagrangian dynamics of two-dimensional incompressible fluid flows is considered, with emphasis on transport processes in atmospheric and oceanic flows. The dynamical-systems-based approach is adopted; the Lagrangian motion in such systems is studied with the aid of Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser (KAM) theory, and results relating to stable and unstable manifolds and lobe dynamics. Some nontrivial extensions of well-known results are discussed, and some extensions of the theory are developed. In problems for which the flow field consists of a steady background on which a time-dependent perturbation is superimposed, it is shown that transport barriers arise naturally and play a critical role in transport processes. Theoretical results are applied to the study of transport in measured and simulated oceanographic and atmospheric flows. Two particular problems are considered. First, we study the Lagrangian dynamics of the zonal jet at the perimeter of the Antarctic Stratospheric Polar Vortex during late winter/early spring within which lies the "ozone hole". In this system, a robust transport barrier is found near the core of a zonal jet under typical conditions, which is responsible for trapping of the ozone-depleted air within the ozone hole. The existence of such a barrier is predicted theoretically and tested numerically with use of a dynamically-motivated analytically-prescribed model. The second, oceanographic, application considered is the study of the surface transport in the Adriatic Sea. The surface flow in the Adriatic is characterized by a robust threegyre background circulation pattern. Motivated by this observation, the Lagrangian dynamics of a perturbed three-gyre system is studied, with emphasis on intergyre transport and the role of transport barriers. It is shown that a qualitative change in transport properties, accompanied by a qualitative change in the structure of stable and unstable manifolds occurs in the perturbed three-gyre system when the perturbation strength exceeds a certain threshold. This behavior is predicted theoretically, simulated numerically with use of an analytically prescribed model, and shown to be consistent with a fully observationally-based model.

Fluid dynamics considers the physics of liquids and gases. This is a branch of classical physics and is totally based on Newton's laws of motion. Nevertheless, the equation of fluid motion, Navier-Stokes equation, becomes very complicated to solve even for very simple configurations. This thesis treats mainly analytical vortex solutions to Navier-Stokes equations. Vorticity is usually concentrated to smaller regions of the flow, sometimes isolated objects, called vortices. If one are able to describe vortex structures exactly, important information about the flow properties are obtained. Initially, the modeling of a conical vortex geometry is considered. The results are compared with wind-tunnel measurements, which have been analyzed in detail. The conical vortex is a very interesting phenomenaon for building engineers because it is responsible for very low pressures on buildings with flat roofs. Secondly, a suggested analytical solution to Navier-Stokes equation for internal flows is presented. This is based on physical argumentation concerning the vorticity production at solid boundaries. Also, to obtain the desired result, Navier-Stokes equation is reformulated and integrated. In addition, a model for required information of vorticity production at boundaries is proposed. The last part of the thesis concerns the examples of vortex models in 2-D and 3-D. In both cases, analysis of the Navier-Stokes equation, leads to the opportunity to construct linear solutions. The 2-D studies are, by the use of diffusive elementary vortices, describing experimentally observed vortex statistics and turbulent energy spectrums in stratified systems and in soapfilms. Finally, in the 3-D analysis, three examples of recent experimentally observed vortex objects are reproduced theoretically. First, coherent structures in a pipe flow is modeled. These vortex structures in the pipe are of interest since they appear for Re in the range where transition to turbulence is expected. The second example considers the motion in a viscous vortex ring. The model, with diffusive properties, describes the experimentally measured velocity field as well as the turbulent energy spectrum. Finally, a streched spiral vortex is analysed. A rather general vortex model that has many degrees of freedom is proposed, which also may be applied in other configurations.

<p>Large-scale coherent structures are systematically investigated in terms of their geometric attributes, importance toward describing turbulent exchange of energy, momentum and mass as well as their relationship to landscape features in the context of land-atmosphere interaction. In the first chapter, we present the motivation of this work as well as a background review of large-scale coherent structures in land-atmosphere interaction. In the second chapter, the methodology of large-eddy simulation (LES) and the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) is introduced. LES was used to serve as a virtual laboratory to simulate typical scenarios in land-atmosphere interaction and the POD was used as the major technique to educe the coherent structures from turbulent flows in land-atmosphere interaction. In the third chapter, we justify the use of the LES to simulate the realistic coherent structures in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) by comparing results obtained from LES of the ABL and direct numerical simulation (DNS) of channel flow. In the fourth chapter, we investigate the effects of a wide range of vegetation density on the coherent structures within the air space within and just above the canopy (the so-called canopy sublayer, CSL). The fifth chapter presents an analysis of the coherent structures across a periodic forest-clearing-forest transition in the steamwise direction. The sixth chapter focuses on the role of coherent structures in explaining scalar dissimilarity in the CSL. The seventh chapter summarizes this dissertation and provides suggestions for future study.</p> / Dissertation

No description available.

abstract: The evolution of single hairpin vortices and multiple interacting hairpin vortices are studied in direct numerical simulations of channel flow at Re-tau=395. The purpose of this study is to observe the effects of increased Reynolds number and varying initial conditions on the growth of hairpins and the conditions under which single hairpins autogenerate hairpin packets. The hairpin vortices are believed to provide a unified picture of wall turbulence and play an important role in the production of Reynolds shear stress which is directly related to turbulent drag. The structures of the initial three-dimensional vortices are extracted from the two-point spatial correlation of the fully turbulent direct numerical simulation of the velocity field by linear stochastic estimation and embedded in a mean flow having the profile of the fully turbulent flow. The Reynolds number of the present simulation is more than twice that of the Re-tau=180 flow from earlier literature and the conditional events used to define the stochastically estimated single vortex initial conditions include a number of new types of events such as quasi-streamwise vorticity and Q4 events. The effects of parameters like strength, asymmetry and position are evaluated and compared with existing results in the literature. This study then attempts to answer questions concerning how vortex mergers produce larger scale structures, a process that may contribute to the growth of length scale with increasing distance from the wall in turbulent wall flows. Multiple vortex interactions are studied in detail. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Mechanical Engineering 2011

abstract: The tools developed for the use of investigating dynamical systems have provided critical understanding to a wide range of physical phenomena. Here these tools are used to gain further insight into scalar transport, and how it is affected by mixing. The aim of this research is to investigate the efficiency of several different partitioning methods which demarcate flow fields into dynamically distinct regions, and the correlation of finite-time statistics from the advection-diffusion equation to these regions. For autonomous systems, invariant manifold theory can be used to separate the system into dynamically distinct regions. Despite there being no equivalent method for nonautonomous systems, a similar analysis can be done. Systems with general time dependencies must resort to using finite-time transport barriers for partitioning; these barriers are the edges of Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS), the analog to the stable and unstable manifolds of invariant manifold theory. Using the coherent structures of a flow to analyze the statistics of trapping, flight, and residence times, the signature of anomalous diffusion are obtained. This research also investigates the use of linear models for approximating the elements of the covariance matrix of nonlinear flows, and then applying the covariance matrix approximation over coherent regions. The first and second-order moments can be used to fully describe an ensemble evolution in linear systems, however there is no direct method for nonlinear systems. The problem is only compounded by the fact that the moments for nonlinear flows typically don't have analytic representations, therefore direct numerical simulations would be needed to obtain the moments throughout the domain. To circumvent these many computations, the nonlinear system is approximated as many linear systems for which analytic expressions for the moments exist. The parameters introduced in the linear models are obtained locally from the nonlinear deformation tensor. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Applied Mathematics 2018

Nesta tese foi estudado o transporte de partículas na borda do plasma confinado magneticamente em tokamaks a partir de um modelo para ondas de deriva proveniente de flutuaçõoes eletrostáticas geradas pela não uniformidade do plasma. Para investigar esse problema, consideramos o modelo com duas ondas de deriva, que possui uma complexa dinâmica não linear onde podemos encontrar tanto transporte anômalo quanto transporte difusivo. Para a encontras no plano de fases as Estruturas Lagrangianas Coerentes (ELCs) e os jatos, foram confeccionados mapas de Poincaré, diagramas de expoente de Lyapunov a tempo finito, diagramas de deslocamento quadrático, diagramas de autocorrelação da velocidade e o diagrama de retorno. Para avaliar o impacto dessas ELCs no transporte de partículas foram analisados a série temporal do desvio padrão médio, da dispersão relativa e dos saltos dentro do mapa de Poincar´e e também foram confeccionados histogramas com a distribuição desses saltos. Foi encontrado que, com duas ondas de deriva e para uma determinada combinação de parâmetros, surgem correntes de jato, que persistem por longos períodos, imersas na região caótica. Verificamos que, assim como nas ilhas, a região interna às correntes de jato são inacessíveis às ELCs. Também foi encontrado que, quando existe uma corrente de jato, o transporte observado na região caótica não é simétrico com uma pequena deriva na direção contraria ao jato. Esse fenômeno observado ocorre em contrapartida ao caso típico de sistemas com mistura em que as ELCs tem acesso a todo o plano de fase e o transporte é difusivo. / In this thesis we studied the particle transport in the edge of magnetically confined plasma in tokamaks using a model of drift waves due to electrostatic fluctuations generated by the non-uniformity of the plasma. To investigate this issue, we consider the model with two drift waves, which has a complex nonlinear dynamics where we can find both anomalous and diffusive transport. To find the Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) and the jets, we used Poincaré maps, Finite time Lyapunov exponent diagrams, quadratic displacement diagrams, autocorrelation velocity diagrams and return displacement diagram. To evaluate the impact of LCSs in the transport of particles, we analyzed the time series of both average standard deviation and relative dispertion and also histograms of the distribution of these jumps. It was found that, with two drift waves and for a given combination of parameters, a jet streams appear in the phase space and persist for long periods of time immersed in the chaotic region. We found that, as well as on the islands, the inner region of the jet streams are inaccessible to LCSs. It was also found that when there is a jet stream, the transport observed in the chaotic region is not symmetrical and have a small drift in the opposite direction to the jet. This phenomenon is observed in contrast to the typical case of systems with mixing in wich the LCSs have access to all the phase space and the trasnport is diffusive.