Distinguished Seminar: High-Resolution, Fast-Response Modeling of Environmental Transport Processes and Complex Terrain

Eric R. Pardyjak, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Utah

Fri., Jan. 24, 3:00 pm
Sidney & Marian Green Classroom (3550 MEK)

Free & Open to the Public

Abstract: The Earth’s surface with heterogeneous landscapes are home to complex processes occurring over a wide range of length and time scales. Understanding and modeling these process is critical to many applications related to improving urban microclimate, reducing energy and water usage, increasing clean energy production, reducing the impacts of pollution emissions, and understanding wildfire spread. Due to difficulty in simulating the large disparity in length scales covering these processes, there is still much to be learned. In this presentation, a description of our approach, which is designed to bridge these scales and improve our understanding of different processes occurring in the built and natural environments at local through meso-scales will be discussed. In particular, an overview of the fast-response QUIC EnvSim tool will be presented along with recent model additions designed to resolve vegetation and mountainous terrain as well as simulate wildfires. QUIC EnvSim predicts winds, dispersion, radiation components, air temperatures and humidity at scales of 1-5 meters.

Bio: Eric Pardyjak is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) and an adjunct professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah. He received a PhD in ME at Arizona State University in 2001. He worked in the Energy and Environmental Analysis Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher from 2000-01. From 2009-2010, he was a visiting professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne working in the Laboratory of Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology. He was also a visiting professor at Paul Sabatier University in the Laboratoire d’Aérologie from 2016-2017. His research interests include the study of turbulence in complex environmental flows using experimental and computational approaches.