UNDERGRADUATE PROJECTS
Summer research opportunities
The Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) and Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP) gives undergraduates a chance to participate in summer research in their field. Students who’ve begun or completed their third year can apply to the program.
Project: Numerical modeling of abyssal currents interacting with topography
Faculty Mentor: Yue Cynthia Wu, ywuocean@umich.edu
Prerequisites: Fluid Mechanics
Mandatory Skills: Knowledge of Fourier transforms. Coding experience with MATLAB. High
Performance Computing using the Great Lakes Slurm cluster is optional.
Project Description: The interactions between abyssal currents and topography, leading to ocean mixing, represent one of the most significant energy dissipation mechanisms in the global ocean circulation. Understanding such dissipation mechanisms is essential for modeling the Earth system and predicting future climate changes. In this study, the student is expected to build upon an existing numerical model of a bottom-intensified jet over gentle topography to investigate variations in topography, such as magnitude, steepness, spectral forms, etc. Postprocessing of the model output will be conducted using MATLAB to analyze the energy budget and deduce dissipation rates. This research endeavor requires the integration of the theory of wave-mean-topography interactions with practical, hands-on experience in ocean modeling and data analysis. The outcome of this investigation will contribute significantly to our understanding of how abyssal currents interact with diverse topographical features and the resulting implications for energy dissipation in the global ocean circulation.
Research Mode: Online and Hybrid
