Maarten van Reeuwijk

Maarten is a Professor in the Fluid Mechanics section in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Apart from running an active research group, he is the Director of Research for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and teaches both at under- and postgraduate level.

Maarten's research interests comprise transport processes in fluids, generally involving wall-bounded turbulence and buoyancy effects. Application areas are transport processes in urban areas (urban heat island, dispersion, microclimate), atmospheric convection, building ventilation (stratified environments, plumes/jets, exchange flows) and oceanographic/coastal applications. Areas of active research include:

• Air quality and urban microclimate in cities, particularly focused on sustainability. Here we use high-fidelity Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) and Urban Energy Balance models to quantify the impact of sustainable infrastructure like green roofs and green walls on air quality and the urban heat island effect.

• Turbulent entrainment in various guises (jets/plumes, volcanic ash, gravity currents, atmospheric/oceanic boundary layers etc). We use Direct Numerical Simulation and theory to get unprecedented insight into this important, yet notoriously difficult to measure, phenomenon.

• The behaviour of particles in turbulent flows. Applications to microplastics in the sea and cloud droplets.

Maarten leads a diverse group of excellent PhD students and post-docs with backgrounds ranging from Aeronautical, Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Mathematics and Physics.