Department of Mechanical Engineering
PRESENTS
Professor H.J.S. Fernando
Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Arizona State University
Urban Fluid Mechanics: Air Circulation and Contaminant Dispersion in Cities
ABSTRACT
In the latter part of the 20th century, there has been a massive influx of
population to urban areas, and currently in the US about 70% of the population
occupies less than 2% of the landmass. Most of these urban areas, especially
those in the southwestern US, are associated with complex terrain, the air flow
in which is characterized by the synoptic winds perturbed by the terrain, local
meso-scale thermal circulation (slope and valley winds), flow past small-scale
features such as building clusters, and complex interactions thereof. The
dispersion and advection of contaminates released within air basins, transported
from elsewhere and formed due to chemical reactions are also of great interest
in dealing with issues such as the quality of life of urban population. In this
presentation, an overview of the results of an on-going program designed to
study flow, turbulence and contaminant transport in complex terrain cities will
be given. Theoretical concepts, laboratory experiments, field observations and
numerical simulations underpinning this program will be presented, and
integration of results from cross-cutting areas of research to understand and
predict urban air quality will be discussed.
BIOSKETCH
Harindra J.S. Fernando received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from the
University of Sri Lanka in 1979 and M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1983) in fluid
mechanics from the Johns Hopkins University. He received post-doctoral training
in environmental engineering sciences at California Institute of Technology
during 1983-84. Since 1984, he has been affiliated with the Department of
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU), where he
has held positions of Assistant Professor (1984-87), Associate Professor (88-92)
and Professor (92-). He has held the position as the Director of the
Environmental Fluid Dynamics Program at ASU since 1994. Additionally, he has
held visiting professorships at the University of Cambridge (UK), ETH (Zurich)
and University of Girona (Spain) and has been an AWU fellow at the Solar Energy
Research Institute (1987-89) and a visiting scientist at the British
Meteorological Office (Summers 1991-1996). In 1986, he received the Presidential
Young Investigator Award (NSF), the ASU Alumni Distinguished Research Award in
1997 and the Rieger Distinguish Scholar Award in Environmental Sciences from the
Rieger Foundation in 2001. He is a fellow of the ASME and has delivered more
than seventy invited presentations at various universities and national and
international laboratories.
Dr. Fernando’s research interests span geophysical turbulence (turbulence in
rotating and stratified fluids), turbulent dispersion, multi-phase flows, double
diffusive phenomena, internal waves and turbulent jets and plumes. More recently
his research focus has shifted to urban environmental issues, especially urban
air pollution. He has authored or co-authored more than one hundred and twenty
five papers in international journals and has published more than one hundred
papers in national and international conference proceedings. Further, he has
presented more than one hundred papers at various conferences and co-edited an
AGU monograph on double-diffusive convection.
As a member of numerous national and international committees, some of Dr.
Fernando’s recent assignments include the NSF Graduate Fellowship Panel
(1996-1999), NSF Career Panel (1999), Scientific Committee for Ocean Research (SCOR)
Working Group on Double Diffusion (Co-Chair, 1999), AMS Committee on Air
Pollution (2000-2003) and Chemical and Biological Security Panel (DOE, 2002). He
serves on the editorial boards of Applied Mechanics Reviews (Associate and
Technical Editor, 1989-), Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics (Editor,
1997-), Advances in Fluid Mechanics Series (Associate Editor, 2000-) and
Environmental Fluid Dynamics (Associate Editor, 2000- ).
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Bourns Hall A265
10:10 a.m.-11:00 p.m.
(Refreshments will be served at 10:00 a.m.)
