Aeronautics & Astronautics
Robert Breidenthal

Professor
Adjunct in Atmospheric Sciences

breidenthal@aa.washington.edu
Office: 314F Guggenheim
Phone: (206) 685-1098

University of Washington
BOX 352400
Seattle, WA 98195-2400

 
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Background

Professor Breidenthal completed his undergraduate work at Wichita State University in Aeronautical Engineering in 1973. He obtained his doctorate degree in Aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology in 1979. He was then a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Caltech until coming to the University of Washington in 1980. Professor Breidenthal has received support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation, NASA and Asea Brown Boveri, Ltd. of Switzerland. He has done consulting work for The Boeing Company, Rocketdyne, ARCO Alaska, U.S. Gypsum, Peerless Manufacturing, Asea Brown Boveri, Learjet, Vornado, Mallen Research and Centriflo.

Research Activities

The single most important unsolved problem in both engineering and geophysics is turbulent entrainment. It controls the vertical fluxes of mass, momentum, and energy throughout the atmosphere and the oceans as well as at their interface. Its role in engineering is equally critical. In our laboratory, we have pursued a systematic study of the fundamentals of turbulent entrainment. The long-term goal is insight into the effects of acceleration, buoyancy-reversal, compressibility, confinement, persistence, rotation, and stratification on entrainment. It appears that a general synthesis may be possible, where these effects will be found to have a common underlying basis. The working hypothesis is that insight into one effect will help in understanding another.

Selected Publications
  1. The effect of acceleration on turbulent entrainment, R.E. Breidenthal 2007
  2. Elements of entrainment,  R.E. Breidenthal 2006 Turbulencia, Escola de Primavera em Transicao e  Turbulencia, ed. A.P. Silva Freire, A. Ilha, and R.E. Breidenthal,  ABCM, Rio de Janeiro, 5(2) 205-221.
  3. Addressing complexity in laboratory experiments: The scaling of dilute multiphase flows in magmatic systems, A. Burgisser, G.W. Bergantz, & R.E. Breidenthal 2005 Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 141 245-265.
  4. The effect of vortex persistence on boundary layer behavior, O.R. Dawson & R.E. Breidenthal 2006, submitted to Experiments in Fluids.
  5. The Vortex as a Clock, R.E. Breidenthal, 2003 Advances in Fluid Mechanics, M. Alam, R. Govindarajan, O.N. Ramesh, & K.R. Sreenivas Eds., Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, India.
  6. Turbulent stratified entrainment and a new parameter for surface fluxes R.E. Breidenthal, Recent Res. Devel. Geophysics, 2 (1999): 61-65
  7. Sonic Eddy Model of the Turbulent Boundary Layer
  8. Stationary vortices and persistent turbulence in Karman grooves , G.J. Balle & R.E. Breidenthal 2002 Journal of Turbulence, 3 33-51.
  9. Non-stationary entrainment and tunneling eruptions: A dynamic template for eruption processes and magma mixing, G.W. Bergantz & R.E. Breidenthal 2001 Geophysical Research Letters 28 3075-3078.
  10. Structure, penetration, and mixing of pulsed jets in crossflow, A. Eroglu and R.E. Breidenthal 2001 AIAA J. 39(3) 417-423.
  11. Vortex persistence - A recent model for stratified entrainment and its application to geophysical flows, A.J. Cotel & R.E. Breidenthal 1999 Geophysical Flows, Klewer.
  12. Turbulent stratified entrainment and a new parameter for surface fluxes, R.E. Breidenthal 1999 Recent Research Developments in Geophysical Research, ed. S.G. Pandalai, Research Signpost, Trivandrum, India, August 1999.