Subhas Karan Venayagamoorthy, Ph.D.
Borland Professor of Fluid Mechanics
Monfort Professor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Colorado State University
My Departmental Webpage
2011 CSU Best Teacher Award Video
Hello and Welcome. I am a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University. My primary research expertise is in the field of environmental fluid mechanics, geophysical fluid dynamics and hydraulics with a particular emphasis on using numerical simulations of fluid flows. My students and I conduct fundamental cutting-edge research in environmental fluid mechanics (e.g. flow turbulence and modeling) related to broader applications in engineering, oceanography, and atmospheric science. This ranges from fundamental studies on turbulent mixing and transport processes in natural flows such as in rivers, estuaries, and the coastal oceans to applied research on mixing in disinfection tanks for drinking water treatment and modeling of flow around wind farms for energy production.
Some of the ongoing research projects are currently funded the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
At Colorado State University, I mainly teach graduate courses in turbulence, numerical methods and computational fluid dynamics, and undergraduate courses in fluid mechanics and engineering dynamics.
Academic Qualifications
- PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA, 2006
- MScEng (cum laude) in Civil Engineering, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, 2002.
- BScEng (summa cum laude) in Civil Engineering, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, 2000
Research Interests
- Environmental Fluid Mechanics & Hydraulic Engineering
- Computational Fluid Mechanics
- Wind Engineering & Energy for Sustainability
- Stratified Turbulence
- Physical Oceanography & Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
- Turbulence Modeling
Selected Publications
- Mater, B. D., Schaad, S. M. and Venayagamoorthy, S. K. 2013. "Relevance of the Thorpe length scale in stably stratified turbulence", Physics of Fluids, 25(7),076604(2013); doi: 10.1063/1.4813809 [pdf].
- Karimpour, F. and Venayagamoorthy, S. K. 2013. "Some insights for the prediction of near-wall turbulence", Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 723, pp 126-139 [pdf].
- Venayagamoorthy, S. K., Ku, H., Fringer, O. B., Chiu, A., Naylor, R. L. and Koseff, J. R. 2011. "Numerical modeling of aquaculture dissolved waste transport in a coastal embayment", Environmental Fluid Mechanics, DOI:10.1007/s10652-011-9209-0 [pdf].
- Elliott, Z. and Venayagamoorthy, S. K. 2011. "Evaluation of turbulent Prandtl (Schmidt) number parameterizations for stably stratified environmental flows", Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans, 51, pp 137-150 [pdf].
- Wilson, J. M., and Venayagamoorthy, S. K. 2010. "Evaluation of hydraulic efficiency of disinfection systems based on residence time distribution (RTD) curves", Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es102861g,[pdf].
- Venayagamoorthy, S. K., and Stretch, D. D. 2010. "On the turbulent Prandtl number in homogeneous stably stratified turbulence", Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 644, pp 359-369 [pdf].
- Venayagamoorthy, S. K., and Fringer, O. B. 2007. "On the formation and propagation of nonlinear internal boluses across a shelf break", Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 577, pp 137-159 [pdf].
- Venayagamoorthy, S. K., and Stretch, D. D. 2006. "Lagrangian mixing in decaying stably stratified turbulence", Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 564, pp 197-226 [pdf].