Gravity Current - in Nature and The Built Environment

In Nature and The Built Environment

Gravity currents are capable of transporting material across large horizontal distances. For example, turbidity currents on the seafloor may carry material thousands of kilometres.

Gravity currents occur at a variety of scales throughout nature. Examples include oceanic fronts, avalanches, haboobs, seafloor turbidity currents, lahars, pyroclastic flows, and lava flows. There are also gravity currents with large density variations - the so-called low Mach number compressible flows. An example of such a gravity current is the heavy gas dispersion in the atmosphere with initial ratio of gas density to density of atmosphere about 1.5-5.

Gravity currents are frequently encountered in the built environment in the form of doorway flows. These occur when a door (or window) separates two rooms of different temperature and air exchanges are allowed to occur. This can for example be experienced when sitting in a heated lobby during winter and the entrance door is suddenly opened. In this case the cold air will first be felt by ones feet as a result of the outside air propagating as a gravity current along the floor of the room. Doorway flows are of interest in the domain of natural ventilation and air conditioning/refrigeration and have been extensively investigated, see for example Kiel and Wilson, Dalziel and Lane-Serff or Phillips and Woods, to name but a few.