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A prognosis for the sudden release of contaminant in an environmental flow
Author(s) -
Sullivan P. J.,
Ye H.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
environmetrics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.68
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-095X
pISSN - 1180-4009
DOI - 10.1002/env.3170060609
Subject(s) - probability density function , gaussian , environmental science , mechanics , fraction (chemistry) , probability mass function , flow (mathematics) , function (biology) , steady state (chemistry) , statistical physics , mathematics , statistics , chemistry , physics , computational chemistry , evolutionary biology , biology , organic chemistry
Abstract A diffusing contaminant cloud is characterized by its location, size and state. The state of contaminant concentration reduction is the main concern in this paper and is represented by the expected‐mass‐fraction function. A bi‐Gaussian probability density function for concentration is developed and shown to describe measured probability density functions throughout the bulk of a variety of steady flows with continuous contaminant sources. The bi‐Gaussian density function is shown to be directly related to the α‐β prescription of moments and to enable the approximate prediction of the expected‐mass‐fraction function. A puff of contaminant released in the neutral atmospheric boundary layer is used as an illustrative example.