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Virginia Tech

Numerical and Theoretical Developments for Coherent Structures

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The field of nonautonomous dynamical systems has undergone an exceptional amount of growth over the last few decades, with the geometric viewpoint leading to the development of Lagrangian and objective Eulerian coherent structures. This theory extends notions developed for autonomous systems to those that may have arbitrary dependence on time and whose flow data may not be known or available for all time. The structures obtained from this theory are material surfaces that have an exceptional effect on the contents of a flow and are key for understanding transport. These structures organize the contents of a flow and lead to a qualitative description of the fate of material under the influence of a flow. While these methods have been adopted in geophysical and engineering applications, the theory is still relatively new. This dissertation aims to contribute to the maturation of this theory and its numerical implementations by providing an efficient and user-friendly software package for these tools, demonstrating the usefulness of these methods on a large-scale transport application, further extending the theory in a specific context, and presenting a new numerical framework for computing LCS from their variational theory.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Philosophy
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Engineering Mechanics
Department dc:contributor.department
Engineering Science and Mechanics
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2025

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Jarvis, Albert Joseph
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Ross, Shane David
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Bollt, Erik Matthew
  • Foroutan, Hosein
  • Iliescu, Traian

Subjects

dc:subject × 4

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:43145
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/134980

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Jarvis, Albert Joseph. Numerical and Theoretical Developments for Coherent Structures. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 2025. https://hdl.handle.net/10919/134980