Subsurface Trapping of Multiphase Plumes in Stratification: Laboratory Investigations
Abstract
Recent observations of subsurface plumes near the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill have raised many questions about the physics of multiphase plumes in deep ocean environments. Plume evolution and vertical distribution will be a complex function of chemical composition (oil, gas, water, and chemical dispersants), water column density structure, turbulent mixing, and horizontal currents. Here we present early laboratory experiments from the UNC Fluids Lab, demonstrating how a miscible turbulent plume, less dense than the entire ambient water column, can be trapped well below the free surface. We describe preliminary experiments in stratified flow tanks intended to model, with appropriate dynamical scaling, the Gulf plume. A simplified ODE closure model has been developed to model the plume trapping height and the percentage of subsurface and surface oil as a function of key non-dimensional parameters associated with deep water oil spills.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFMOS33C1483W
- Keywords:
-
- 4500 OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL;
- 4568 OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL / Turbulence;
- diffusion;
- and mixing processes