INVERTED FLOOR WIND-TUNNEL SIMULATION OF STABLY STRATIFIED ATMOSPHERIC BOUNDARY-LAYER FLOW

Most of the critical transport processes in the atmosphere are dominated by density stratification; hence, physical modeling facilities which neglect the important contributions of buoyancy are limited to the examination of high winds or those brief moments after sunrise or before sunset when the atmosphere is nominally neutrally stratified. Large new facilities constructed specifically to simulate the atmosphere offer new opportunities to study the physics of mixing processes dominated by stratification. A novel arrangement to simulate stably stratified atmospheric boundary layer flows in large wind tunnels using distributed electrical heaters and an inverted ground plane to simulate nighttime inversions is described, together with initial measurements.