Richard M. McLaughlin, Ph.D.

Professor
Office: Phillips Hall 320
Phone: (919) 962-9816
Fluids Lab: B02 Chapman Hall (919-843-8900)
Thermal Lab: 413 Chapman Hall (919-843-3483)
Email: rmm@email.unc.edu

CV

Educational Background

Ph.D., Applied Mathematics, Princeton, 1994
M.S., Applied Mathematics, Princeton, 1991
B.S., Mathematics, University of Arizona, 1989

Research Interests

• Experimental and Theoretical Fluid Dynamics
• Turbulent Transport
• Random Phenomena
• Stratified Mixing

Fluids Lab:

We operated for 10 years running a small lab in Phillips Hall, in the summer of 2007, with the opening of Chapman Hall, we moved into a large, modern laboratory located in the basement, level B, rm B02. This was made possible thanks to the Carolina Science Complex which was funded by the people of North Carolina through a bond referendum, and completed thanks to the generous support of the University of North Carolina and the Carolina Science Complex Core Group. This lab is shared jointly with Mathematics and the Marine Sciences departments and has been generously funded through the National Science Foundation and Office of Naval Research. It contains a 120 foot long modular wave tank, a wind tunnel, a 3D stereoscopic PIV imaging system, and many other exciting things. We are soon to open (presently under construction) a fully recyclable salt water storage and filtration system which will allow us rapid stratification and reuse of saltwater in the modular wavetank. We have additionally just opened a state of the art thermal lab in Chapman 413 which houses a custom 4 wall optically accessible thermal bath, as well as accurate temperature and density calibration tools. We work closely with undergrads, grads, postdocs, and high school students, and we are always looking to get new people involved.

National Geographic Oil Plume Article

Magnolia Collective

The Pneurotics

CNN Oil Spill segment

Falling Sphere Video

Recent Articles

Falling Sphere Paper

Homogenization of Gravity Currents

Weakly compressible transport barrier

Turbulent Plumes

PDF Tail of the random uniform shear layer

Exact spatio-temporal scalar PDF

Breathing PDFs in the Majda Model

Spinning rod theory, nano experiments and macro experiments

Exact results for spinning rods

Evolution of random passive scalar in deterministic flow

Enhanced diffusion surface: rigorous asymptotic results

Path of Least Time in Potential Flow and Connection to Darwin's Theorem

The Exact Scalar Variance in Channel and Pipe Flow

Quantitative Prediction of Falling Sphere in Stratified Fluid Low Reynolds

Experiments and Theory for Sphere falling in Stratified Fluid Low Reynolds

Homogenized Averaging of Gravity Currents in Porous Media: sharp interface limit

Mode Sorting Using WKB for Passive Scalar in Channel Flow

Blocking by Sphere in Zero Reynolds Linear Shear Flows: Exact results

Viscous coating of fiber in stratified flow

Supplementary material viscous fiber coating

AGU Oil Spill monograph: trapped oil plumes

Computations and Experiments of Stratified Vortex Rings