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Conducting research into advancing the application of acoustics to the measurement of sediment transport processes.
Development of a theoretical framework for understanding the interaction of sound with suspensions of marine sediments and inversion techniques to extract sediment parameters from the backscattered signal.
Instrument development. Coherent acoustic Doppler profilers for measuring near bed turbulent and intra-wave hydrodynamics. The development of acoustic ripple profilers and rotary scanners for studies of bed forms and suspended sediment imaging for sediment process studies.
Recent studies have been on acoustic measurements of intra-wave vortex entrainment of sediments, convective-diffusive modelling of suspended sediments, diffusivity studies over rippled beds, a review of sediment process modelling and analysis of the scattering properties of suspensions of sandy sediments and cohesive flocculating sediments. Recent publications have been on the impact of biological and physical cohesion on sandy sediment dynamics.
Recent projects
- 2016-2020 BLUEcoast NERC funded project
- 2015-2019 Hydralab+ EU funding and transnational access
- 2013–2017 NERC funded proposal BMCC.
- 2012–2015 NERC funded COHBED
- 2012–2015 EPSRC funded INSTRON.
- 2010–2014 European funding HydralabIV
- 2008–2012 FLOCSAM NERC funding.
Ongoing projects
HYDRALAB+ 2015–2019 EU funding. NOC is a partner in HYDRALAB+ (https://www.hydralab.eu), this is a pan European collaboration to develop and improve research in experimental modelling to address the issues of climate change adaptation. There are 33 partners and associated partners from Europe in the HYDRALAB+ network. The project brings together European researchers, industry and stakeholders to improve experimental research, related numeric modelling and field studies aimed at adapting to climate change. The consortium share and exchange information regarding the latest developments in experimental hydraulics both within the network and with external stakeholders. Looking to the future, we are conducting foresight studies and provide training to the next generation of researchers.
BLUEcoast 2016–2020 NERC funding. https://projects.noc.ac.uk/bluecoast The project aims to inform coastal management by reducing uncertainties in the prediction of medium-term (years) and long-term (decadal and longer) regional sediment budgets, morphological change and how the coast recovers after sequences of storms. The teams are undertaking observations and experiments to develop modelling tools that will be used to evaluate coastal resilience and scope alternative management options. BLUEcoast combines the expertise of biologists, coastal engineers, geologists, geographers, and oceanographers with complementary field, laboratory and numerical skills. As it is not feasible to quantify all the relevant morphodynamic processes at high spatial resolution across the entire UK coast, we focus on a number of representative coastal systems.