In coastal and ocean engineering, understanding the ocean environment and the forces from waves, tsunamis and waterborne debris on structures and floating bodies is an important aspect of designing safe and effective infrastructure. Understanding the impact of these forces on structures becomes an important question in the design process. Answering...
This work addresses the application of Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) to a class of ocean wave energy conversion systems in which the cost functional is not in a standard quadratic form, and the WEC model includes the nonlinear effects, such as the hydrodynamic viscous drag. The NMPC implementation is...
Coastal foredunes protect lives, infrastructure, and ecosystems during severe winter storms. In the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW), coastal foredune geomorphology is determined by both physical and ecological mechanisms. Before the 1900's, the native plant Elymus mollis was the dominant dune grass and dune morphology was largely determined by sediment supply...
Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) is a very interesting and challenging multi-disciplinary field involving interaction of a movable or deformable structure with an internal or surrounding fluid flow. FSI plays a pivotal role in many different types of real-world situations and practical engineering applications involving large structural deformation and material or geometric...
Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) imagery can provide wavenumber and frequency data to generate bathymetry estimates for locations where limited access or extreme ocean conditions can make standard bathymetry survey techniques difficult or impossible. The availability of SAR data could allow for regular bathymetry estimates of navigational channels providing insight into dredging...
VCO-based ADCs have recently emerged as attractive alternative to conventional DeltaSigma (ΔΣ) modulator architectures. Few salient features of a VCObased ADC are: 1) the quantization noise is 1st order noise shaped, 2) it is an open loop architecture, and, 3) its implementation is mostly digital in nature. Hence, they are...
We examine the interactions and feedbacks between bathymetry, waves, currents, and
sediment transport. The first two pro jects focus on the use of remote sensing techniques
to expand our knowledge of the nearshore. Due to the plethora of snap-shot data that is
available from satellites and their distribution via Google...
Predominant models for predicting rates of sediment transport face acute shortcomings when applied to coastal boundary layers. This is due to a neglect of the web of stochastic variables governing the rate of sediment dislodgement. While stochastic models do exist, the parametric extent of their validity tends to be limited,...
Turbulent flows over rough surfaces are encountered in many engineering and geophysical applications. Flows of this nature, due to their increasing technological interests, have been a subject of rigorous investigation in recent years. Of the particular interest to the oceanographic community is the study of turbulent oscillatory flow over rough...
Physical modelling is instrumental to the progression of coastal engineering research and our understanding of the offshore and nearshore environments. Scaled models are designed and built to be tested in coastal research laboratories, where a wave basin or flume generates the desired wave conditions for experimentation. The surrounding hydrodynamics of...