Airflow over complex terrain throughout the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) governs the transport and mixing of mass, momentum, and heat. Topography causes obstruction of the airflow and generates airflow distortion and turbulence. Perturbations in land-atmosphere interactions cause various weather phenomena like cold-air pools (CAPs) leading to changes in many aspects of weather and climate that impact the optimal position of wind-turbine, forest-fire behavior, and forecasting, as well as trace-gas and pollutant dispersion. This thesis investigates the flow over complex terrain, specifically double-hill terrain, with new numerical model approaches. The first study utilizes the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with large eddy simulations (LES) and the immersed-boundary method (IBM) to improve the simulations of the flow and recirculation regions over steep double-hill terrain. The gap distance controls the flow distribution behind both hills. The upwind hill has a significant influence on the second hill. When the gap distance is too small, the flow after the upwind hill cannot regain its momentum. The second study examines the flow distribution over a forested double-hill and the impact of the gap distance between two hills on scalar transport (CO2 and H2O). This study uses the WRF-LES model coupled with a new multiple-layer canopy module (MCANOPY module). We find that flow recirculation is the primary factor dominating scalar transport. Scalars are transported and trapped in both recirculation regions and accumulated on the lee sides of both hills. Our simulation shows the occurrence of two vortices on the lee side of the upstream hill enhances the accumulation of scalars in the valleys. In the end, we extend our work from the first study to understand flow patterns over a realistic double-hill topography. Results show that the valley gap distance is so small that the recirculation region in the valley between two hills cannot fully develop. Additionally, the WRF-IBM captures the structure of microscale flows that other models have not captured in the previous studies.

A stable atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) develops over land at night due to radiative surface cooling. The state of turbulence in the stable boundary layer (SBL) is determined by the competing forcings of shear production and buoyancy destruction. When both forcings are comparable in strength, the SBL falls into an intermittently turbulent state, where intense turbulent bursts emerge sporadically from an overall quiescent background. This usually occurs on clear nights with weak winds when the SBL is strongly stable. Although turbulent bursts are generally short-lived (half an hour or less), their impact on the SBL is significant since they are responsible for most of the turbulent mixing. The nighttime SBL can be modeled with large-eddy simulation (LES). LES is a turbulence-resolving numerical approach which separates the large-scale energy-containing eddies from the smaller ones based on application of a spatial filter. While the large eddies are explicitly resolved, the small ones are represented by a subfilter-scale (SFS) stress model. Simulation of the SBL is more challenging than the daytime convective boundary layer (CBL) because nighttime turbulent motions are limited by buoyancy stratification, thus requiring fine grid resolution at the cost of immense computational resources. The intermittently turbulent SBL adds additional levels of complexity, requiring the model to not only sustain resolved turbulence during quiescent periods, but also to transition into a turbulent state under appropriate conditions. As a result, LES of the strongly stable SBL potentially requires even finer grid resolution, and has seldom been attempted. This dissertation takes a different approach. By improving the SFS representation of turbulence with a more sophisticated model, intermittently turbulent SBL is simulated, to our knowledge, for the first time in the LES literature. The turbulence closure is the dynamic reconstruction model (DRM), applied under an explicit filtering and reconstruction LES framework. The DRM is a mixed model that consists of subgrid scale (SGS) and resolved subfilter scale (RSFS) components. The RSFS portion is represented by a scale-similarity model that allows for backscatter of energy from the SFS to the mean flow. Compared to conventional closures, the DRM is able to sustain resolved turbulence under moderate stability at coarser resolution (thus saving computational resources). The DRM performs equally well at fine resolution. Under strong stability, the DRM simulates an intermittently turbulent SBL, whereas conventional closures predict false laminar flows. The improved simulation methodology of the SBL has many potential applications in the area of wind energy, numerical weather prediction, pollution modeling and so on. The SBL is first simulated over idealized flat terrain with prescribed forcings and periodic lateral boundaries. A wide range of stability regimes, from weakly to strongly stable conditions, is tested to evaluate model performance. Under strongly stable conditions, intermittency due to mean shear and turbulence interactions is simulated and analyzed. Furthermore, results of the strongly stable SBL are used to improve wind farm siting and nighttime operations. Moving away from the idealized setting, the SBL is simulated over relatively flat terrain at a Kansas site over the Great Plains, where the Cooperative Atmospheric-Surface Exchange Study - 1999 (CASES-99) took place. The LES obtains realistic initial and lateral boundary conditions from a meso-scale model reanalysis through a grid nesting procedure. Shear-instability induced intermittency observed on the night of Oct 5th during CASES-99 is reproduced to good temporal and magnitude agreement. The LES locates the origin of the shear-instability waves in a shallow upwind valley, and uncovers the intermittency mechanism to be wave breaking over a standing wave (formed over a stagnant cold-air bubble) across the valley. Finally, flow over the highly complex terrain of the Owens Valley in California is modeled with a similar nesting procedure. The LES results are validated with observation data from the 2006 Terrain-Induced Rotor Experiment (T-REX). The nested LES reproduces a transient nighttime warming event observed on the valley floor on April 17 during T-REX. The intermittency mechanism is shown to be through slope-valley flow transitions. In addition, a cold-air intrusion from the eastern valley sidewall is simulated. This generates an easterly cross-valley flow, and the associated top-down mixing through breaking Kelvin-Helmholtz billows is analyzed. Finally, the nesting methodology tested and optimized in the CASES-99 and T-REX studies is transferrable to general ABL applications. For example, a nested LES is performed to model daytime methane plume dispersion over a landfill and good results are obtained.

First concise textbook on Large-Eddy Simulation, a very important method in scientific computing and engineering From the foreword to the third edition written by Charles Meneveau: "... this meticulously assembled and significantly enlarged description of the many aspects of LES will be a most welcome addition to the bookshelves of scientists and engineers in fluid mechanics, LES practitioners, and students of turbulence in general."

This book addresses both the fundamentals and the practical industrial applications of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) in order to bridge the gap between LES research and the growing need to use it in engineering modeling.

First concise textbook on Large-Eddy Simulation, a very important method in scientific computing and engineering From the foreword to the third edition written by Charles Meneveau: "... this meticulously assembled and significantly enlarged description of the many aspects of LES will be a most welcome addition to the bookshelves of scientists and engineers in fluid mechanics, LES practitioners, and students of turbulence in general."

This book gathers the proceedings of the 11th workshop on Direct and Large Eddy Simulation (DLES), which was held in Pisa, Italy in May 2017. The event focused on modern techniques for simulating turbulent flows based on the partial or full resolution of the instantaneous turbulent flow structures, as Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS), Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) or hybrid models based on a combination of LES and RANS approaches. In light of the growing capacities of modern computers, these approaches have been gaining more and more interest over the years and will undoubtedly be developed and applied further. The workshop offered a unique opportunity to establish a state-of-the-art of DNS, LES and related techniques for the computation and modeling of turbulent and transitional flows and to discuss about recent advances and applications. This volume contains most of the contributed papers, which were submitted and further reviewed for publication. They cover advances in computational techniques, SGS modeling, boundary conditions, post-processing and data analysis, and applications in several fields, namely multiphase and reactive flows, convection and heat transfer, compressible flows, aerodynamics of airfoils and wings, bluff-body and separated flows, internal flows and wall turbulence and other complex flows.