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Last update

September 19th, 2007

Coriolis is one of the  9 teams that constitute the Laboratoire Des Ecoulements Geophysiques et Industriels LEGI at Grenoble, France. 

The main activity is the experimental modeling of geophysical flows, taking into account Earth rotation, with or without density stratification or topography.

This activity is focussed  on the large Turntable , 13 m in diameter (the biggest in the world). It has been built in 1960 for modeling tidal currents in the English Channel, later renovated and instrumented to study the dynamics of rotating fluids. Thanks to the european grant Access to Major Research Infrastructure, the instrument attracts many visiting scientists.

Modeling of oceanic (or atmospheric) dynamics at meso-scale is performed, involving internal waves, convection, gravity currents, boundary layers, topographic effects, geostrophic turbulence and the emergence of organized vortices (see   Current Research ). Thanks to the large size, inertial regimes can be approached, with low effects of viscosity and centrifugal force. Laboratory experiments allow then to test models of ocean dynamics, and to develop their physical parametrisations, in collaboration with the team MEOM and the Geophysics Group of LEGI.

In the field of mechanical engineering, the large turntable allows to upscale parts of rotating machines,  to study the structure of turbulence. Instrumentation in fluid dynamics is developped, in particular particle imaging velocimetry,  yielding three-dimensional velocity fields resolved in time. The development of this technique has been the aim of an European RTD project, HYDRIV, coordinated by the team