Convective diffusion-field measurements compared with laboratory and numerical experiments

Technical Report · Wed Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 1986

OSTI ID:7167402

Briggs, G A; Eberhard, W L; Gaynor, J E; Moninger, W R; Uttal, T

Some of the more fundamental diffusion parameters measured in the CONDORS convective diffusion field experiment are compared with laboratory experiment and numerical modeling results by means of nondimensionalizations using convective scaling (i.e., mixing depth, z/sub i/, for length and w* for velocity). The CONDORS experiment used remote sensors, radar and lidar, to measure three-dimensional patterns of metalicized chaff and oil fog. The growth of the vertical standard deviation of plume distribution, sigma/sub z/, agrees quite well with the non-field results, approximating 0.6 w*t nearly to the point of limitation by capping at z = z/sub i/. The lateral standard deviation, sigma sub y, also tends to approximate 0.6 w*t for most elevated releases, while most surface releases show slower growth at large t that better approximates the non-field results. Surface patterns of crosswind-integrated concentration show remarkable agreement with the laboratory results, for the most part, although there is more variation in individual runs; peak values from elevated releases are on the order of 70% larger than conventional Gaussian model predictions.

• Research Organization: Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC (USA). Atmospheric Sciences Research Lab.
• OSTI ID: 7167402
• Report Number(s): PB-87-104634/XAB; EPA-600/D-86/236
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

500100* -- Environment
Atmospheric-- Basic Studies-- (-1989)
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
AIR POLLUTION
ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
DISTRIBUTION
FOG
MATHEMATICS
MEASURING METHODS
NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
OILS
ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
OTHER ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
PARTICLES
PARTICULATES
PLUMES
POLLUTION