7. Velocity profiles and turbulence
Turbulence is a ubiquitous phenomenon
in environmental fluid mechanics that dramatically affects flow structure and
mixing. Thus, it is very important to form both a conceptual understanding and
a quantitative description of turbulent flows. This section looks at the origin
and statistical description of turbulence, as well as the structure of a turbulent
boundary layer. The notes also focus upon the characterization of rapid turbulent
mixing in environmental systems. Sample problems in this chapter test the user's
ability to evaluate key flow parameters from turbulent boundary layer profiles,
as well as to determine the scales of turbulent diffusivity in environmental
flows.
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