Stephen Solovitz
Washington State University, WA·Earth & Environmental Science
Explosive volcanic eruptions throw ash high into the atmosphere, where it can endanger aircraft, damage infrastructure, harm human health and even affect global climate. Where that ash finally lands depends on how individual particles behave in the turbulent eruption cloud.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Engineering
Physics
- Topics
volcanic ash
volcanic plumes
ash aggregation
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Measure how often ash clusters break apart (disaggregate) during three-body particle collisions in a humid chamber, using high-speed video of impacts between particles of different size, material and porosity.
- Add the measured probabilities of cluster breakup to a volcanic plume model, so that it gives more accurate predictions of ash fallout for hazard assessment.
- Quantify how turbulence and moisture drive particle clustering in particle-laden turbulent jets that mimic eruption plumes, using high-resolution optical measurement techniques.
- Measure particle charging and electric fields in laboratory plumes with electrical sensors, then connect these data to eruption conditions and build them into a computational model for monitoring volcanic plumes remotely.
More about the research
Tiny particles can drift thousands of kilometers, but particles that stick together into clusters (aggregation) fall out closer to the volcano. Clusters can also break apart again (disaggregation). Electric charge, moisture and turbulence all shape these processes. Most forecasting models ignore clustering, and none include disaggregation. The lab builds laboratory-scale versions of these conditions and measures them directly. The goal is to feed the measurements into computer models that predict ash fallout more accurately.
Why it matters
Better predictions of where volcanic ash will fall could improve hazard assessments for air traffic, infrastructure and communities near and downwind of volcanoes. Understanding how plumes become electrically charged could also help scientists use volcanic lightning and its radio emissions to monitor dangerous eruptions remotely and in near real time, even at volcanoes that are hard to reach.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Shyam Menon
Louisiana State University, LA·Engineering·Early-career
Measure unsteady drag and heat transfer on single particles suddenly accelerated in a shock tube, using particle motion and temperature measurements to evaluate existing models.
James Gardner
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Earth & Environmental Science
Reconstruct the 1980 Mount St. Helens pyroclastic density current in four dimensions by mapping the orientations of trees it knocked down and combining them with closely timed eruption photographs from multiple vantage points.
Jessica Larsen
University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK·Earth & Environmental Science
Estimate magma storage depths beneath Mt. Edgecumbe by combining experimental petrology and melt inclusion analyses of rock samples with InSAR satellite measurements of ground deformation.
The school
Washington State University: 22 labs on PI Pages, $403M a year on research, 259 research doctorates a year.
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