S. Pierini coordinated the GAPWEBS project, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement N. 654110, HYDRALAB+. The laboratory experiments were conducted at the Coriolis rotating platform of the “Laboratoire des Écoulements Géophysiques et Industriels” (LEGI-CNRS, Grenoble).

Publications:

Pierini S., P. de Ruggiero, M. E. Negretti, I. Schiller-Weiss, J. Weiffenbach, S. Viboud, T. Valran, H. A. Dijkstra and J. Sommeria, 2022: Laboratory experiments reveal intrinsic self-sustained oscillations in ocean relevant rotating fluid flows. Scientific Reports, 12, 1375. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05094-1, Supplementary Information

Pierini S., P. de Ruggiero, H. A. Dijkstra, I. Schiller-Weiss, J. Weiffenbach, M. E. Negretti and J. Sommeria, 2019: Laboratory modeling of gap-leaping ad intruding western bundary currents under different climate change scenarios. In Proceedings of the HYDRALAB+ Joint User Meeting, Bucharest (May 2019). PDF

From left to right: Samuel Viboud, Paola de Ruggiero, Stefano Pierini, Eletta Negretti, Henk Dijkstra, Thomas Valran	Here Joël Sommeria is also present (second from right). He is the leader of the Coriolis facility and the director of Legi

For a detailed description of the Hydralab+ project, click here For a detailed description of the Coriolis facility within the Hydralab+ framework, click here

The Coriolis platform, 13 m in diameter, is the largest rotating platform in the world dedicated to fluid dynamics. Its main activity is the experimental modeling of geophysical flows, taking into account the rotation of the Earth, in the presence or not of density stratification or topography. The large size provides access to the inertial regimes that characterize ocean dynamics, with little influence of viscosity and centrifugal force. Laboratory experiments can thus provide support to model ocean dynamics and develop their physical parameterizations.

Click here for a 3D animation of the

Coriolis rotating platform

The facility is equipped, among other instruments, with the Particle Imaging Velocimetry (PIV) system, which provides time resolved velocity fields in both horizontal and vertical planes of up to 3 m x 4 m in size, with a relative precision 2%. The laser sheet position is scanned by a computer controlled system, so that image correlation for PIV can be made in a volume. Both vorticity and divergence fields can be computed from the PIV data and directly compared with numerical computations.

Click here for a presentation of the Laboratoire des Écoulements Géophysiques et Industriels