Turbulence Modeling

The focus of this area of research is the development and testing of turbulence models for stratified turbulent flows. The class of models we are mainly interested in are so-called one-point turbulence closure models, in particular second-moment closures.

Among the models developed by our group is a version of the k-ω model for stratified flows (Umlauf et al., 2003), and a generic length scale model (GLM) from which almost all traditional models (e.g. the k-ε model and the Mellor-Yamada model) can be recovered as special cases (Umlauf and Burchard, 2003). More information about these and related models can be found in the review article by Umlauf and Burchard (2005).

The turbulence models developed by us and other groups are implemented in our public domain turbulence library GOTM (Umlauf et al, 2005). Either via an interface to GOTM or as stand-alone versions, these turbulence models have been implemented in a number of three-dimensional ocean models (ROMS, OPA, MOM4, POLCOMS, GETM, etc.). 

For more information about GOTM and our three-dimensional circulation model GETM, check out our web sites at www.gotm.net and www.getm.eu.