Project Grant 2138583

This two-year, $224,990 project grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) will support research to advance understanding of particle-laden gravity currents. The University of California, Santa Barbara will integrate analytical modeling, numerical simulation, laboratory experimentation, and field data to study the dynamics of gravity and particle-driven currents released from a moving source under varying conditions. Specifically, the project will examine how source speed relative to buoyancy velocity influences current behavior and the role of background currents. It will also quantify sediment detraining from polydisperse particle-driven currents based on particle size and velocity distributions. Empirical models developed through concurrent laboratory and simulation work will be extended to include entrainment and detraining processes. Finally, the research will experimentally investigate the effects of flocculation and aggregation on polydisperse particle plumes, with the goal of developing macroscale numerical models to incorporate these phenomena into models of moving sediment sources. Project results have the potential to inform environmental regulations for emerging industries like deep-sea mining that re-suspend large volumes of seafloor sediment.