A senior lecturer in the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Queensland has been awarded his fourth Australian Academy of Science international exchange fellowship in five years.
Dr Hubert Chanson, whose specialist field is fluid mechanics, hydraulics and environmental engineering, will spend six months next year working on a program in Japan.
Under a project co-sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Dr Chanson will leave either at the end of December or early January to work with Dr S. Aoki at Toyohashi University of Technology.
The pair will conduct field trips around Mikawa Bay where attention will focus on man-made coastal alterations such as breakwaters, land reclamation and large floating structures.
The aim of the field observations and subsequent laboratory experiments is to examine the effect of wave action on such structures and, conversely, their effect on the action of the waves and water.
Dr Chanson said a key factor in the assessment of water quality, whether in lakes, estuaries or the ocean, was the dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration.
He said most aquatic life forms were aerobic and if DO levels were too low these life forms died and were replaced by anaerobic bacteria which produce toxic and unpleasant smelling chemicals.
'Usually most dissolved oxygen is derived from free surface aeration, gas transfer at the surface of seas and lakes,' Dr Chanson said.
'A substantial component of the mass transfer process occurs by the mixing caused by waves, including the contribution of breaking waves, turbulence near the sea surface and the presence of air bubbles.'
According to Dr Chanson, few researchers understand the mechanism and processes governing breaking waves which remains 'one of the unsolved problems in fluid mechanics'.
The study in Japan would greatly add to present understanding about the behaviour of coastal structures. 'Practical results will be directly relevant to the Australian shoreline and to Australian engineers,' he said.
Dr Chanson's Academy of Science fellowships began in 1994 when he spent a month at the University of Taipei, in Taiwan, working on the design of hydraulic structures.
The same year he went to Grenoble, in France, for six weeks' collaborative research on multi-phase flow, studying the fluid mechanics of a mixture of gas and liquid.
Then in 1995 he was back in Taiwan for a total of eight months looking at the effects of coastal breaking waves, research related to his next trip to Japan.
For further information, contact Dr Hubert Chanson (telephone 3365 3516).
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