Laura Legnani

Giovedì 5 dicembre si terrà, presso la lecture room 1P dell’Università di Trento, il seminario dal titolo: “Computational fluid dynamics for environmental applications: highly-resolved simulations of atmospheric processes“. L’intervento, che fa parte del ciclo di Seminari di Meteorologia Ambientale curati dall’Università di Trento, sarà tenuto da Carlo Cintolesi, ricercatore dell’Università di Bologna specializzato in simulazioni numeriche di flussi ambientali. L’evento avrà luogo alle 14:30 e potrà essere seguito anche su zoom, tramite il link seguente: https://unitn.zoom.us/j/82836843049 (ID: 828 3684 3049, Code: 461288) Di seguito un abstract del seminario: The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach aims to numerically resolve the primitive equations of motion, directly reproducing the dynamic and thermal processes that govern fluid systems. The use of sub-models or empirical parameterisation is reduced to a minimum and typically consists of introducing appropriate turbulence models. This entails a minimization of modelling errors and the possibility of accurately reproducing physical processes at small scales; however, it poses numerous challenges among which the high computing cost required and the possible numerical instability of simulations. It is crucial to address these challenges and broaden the application of high-resolution numerical simulations to environmental systems as an additional and effective analysis tool, capable of revealing turbulent mechanisms and processes that govern local dynamics which are often difficult to capture by measurements and observations. In this seminar, we show how the use of CFD techniques has been successfully applied to the study of environmental problems like pollutant dispersion in urban canyons, anabatic slope flows, and the unveiling of turbulent structures in thunderstorm supercells’ wake. These are framed in the activities of the Physics of the Atmosphere group at the University of Bologna.