Wenbo Tang’s research concerns the nonlinear dynamics of fluids that are relevant in environmental sciences and geophysics. He and his research team develop mathematical models and numerical algorithms to explain the mechanisms of mixing processes in fluid flows. In particular, their focus is on the dynamics and transport of energy, chemicals and pollutants in oceanic and atmospheric flows. Using recently developed mathematical tools; these studies target at the mixing of substances where the underlining fluid flow is strongly chaotic and complex, which provides new insights from the last generation of theories and models where the underlining turbulence was assumed to be uniformly random. These new perspectives help the development of next generation regional and global models for environmental and geophysical processes.
Theoretical, Numerical studies of mixing and chaotic transport in environmental, geophysical and engineering flows
Publications
Hon, K. K., Chan, P. W., Chiu, Y. Y., Tang, W. Application of Short-range LIDAR in Early Alerting for Low level Windshear and Turbulence at the Hong Kong International Airport. Advances in Meteorology (2014).
Wenbo Tang, Alex Mahalov. The response of charged density due to breaking inertial gravity wave in the lower regions of ionosphere. Physics of Plasmas (2014).
Tang, W., Luna, C. and Dhumuntarao, A. Biological reactions with coherent structures. Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach Reports (2014).
Wenbo Tang, Alex Mahalov. Stochastic Lagrangian dynamics for charged flows in the E-F regions of ionosphere. Physics of Plasmas (2013).
Wenbo Tang, Christopher Luna. Dependence of advection-diffusion-reaction on flow coherent structures. Physics of Fluids (2013).
Wenbo Tang, Brent Knutson, Alex Mahalov, Reneta Dimitrova. The geometry of inertial particle mixing in urban flows, from deterministic and random displacement models. Physics of Fluids (2012).
Wenbo Tang, Phillip Walker. Finite-time statistics of scalar diffusion in Lagrangian coherent structures. Phys. Rev. E (2012).
Wenbo Tang, Pak Wai Chan, George Haller. Lagrangian Characterization of Terrain Induced Turbulence Based on LIDAR Observations. Part I: Turbulence structure detection. J. Appl. Meteor. Clim (2011).
Wenbo Tang, Pak Wai Chan, George Haller. Lagrangian Characterization of Terrain Induced Turbulence Based on LIDAR Observations. Part II: Flow Characteristics and Airplane Approaches. J. Appl. Meteor. Clim (2011).
Wenbo Tang, Jay Taylor, Alex Mahalov. Stochastic Lagrangian Coherent Structures of Inertia-Gravity Waves. Physics of Fluids (2010).
Wenbo Tang, Manikandan Mathur, George Haller, Douglas C. Hahn and Frank H. Ruggiero. Lagrangian Coherent Structures near a subtropical jet stream. Journal of Atmospheric Sciences (2010).
Wenbo Tang, Pak Wai Chan, George Haller. Accurate extraction of Lagrangian coherent structures over finite domains with application to flight data analysis over Hong Kong International Airport. Chaos (2010).
Wenbo Tang, Thomas Peacock. Lagrangian Coherent Structures and internal wave attractors. Chaos (2010).
Wenbo Tang, George Haller, Pak Wai Chan. Lagrangian Coherent Structures in Finite Domains. 16th US National Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (2010).
Wenbo Tang, Colm Caulfield, Rich Kerswell. A prediction for the optimal stratification for turbulent mixing. Journal of Fluid Mechanics (2009).
Wenbo Tang, George Haller, Jong-Jin Baik and Young-Hee Ryu. Locating an Atmospheric Contamination Source Using Slow Manifolds. Physics of Fluids (2009).
Wenbo Tang, George Haller and Pak Wai Chan. Lagrangian Coherent Structures and Turbulence Detection near the Hong Kong International Airport based on LIDAR Measurements. American Meteorological Society 17th Conference on Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics (0).
Research Activity
Tang,Wenbo*. Collaborative Research: Theories and experiments on scalar mixing in chaotic flows. NSF-MPS-DMS(9/1/2012 - 8/31/2016).
Kostelich,Eric John*, Armbruster,Hans Dieter, Czygrinow,Andrzej Michal, Fishel,Susanna, Gelb,Anne, Jacobs,Mark, Kawski,Matthias, Kuang,Yang, Mahalov,Alex, Moustaoui,Mohamed, Platte,Rodrigo B, Tang,Wenbo. MCTP: Mathematics Mentoring Partnership Between Arizona State University and the Maricopa County Community College District. NSF-MPS-DMS(7/15/2012 - 6/30/2017).
Mahalov,Alex*, Fernando,H J S, Huang,Huei-Ping, Moustaoui,Mohamed, Tang,Wenbo. CMG Research: Multiscale Modeling of Urban Atmosphere in a Changing Climate. NSF-MPS-DMS(9/1/2009 - 8/31/2014).
