Internal waves, turbulence and mixing in stratified flows: A report on Euromech Colloquium 339

Euromech colloquium 339 was organized by C. Staquet in Lyon (France) from September 6 to 9, 1995. It involved seventy-six participants from fourteen countries. Papers were presented on various aspects of stably stratified flows: (i) internal waves, their generation mechanisms, propagation and reflection properties, their instabilities leading to breaking; (ii) vortex structures in stably stratified fluids, which can be slow layerwise structures, or small intense vortices, appearing for instance in shear flow instabilities; (iii) statistical properties of random wave fields or stratified turbulence; (iv) mixing properties resulting from internal wave fields and stratified turbulence. These quite different dynamical regimes are often closely connected in actual flow problems, and one purpose of this colloquium was to better understand these connections. Participants were interested in fundamental aspects or in more specific applications, in engineering, geophysics and astrophysics. The colloquium was a rare opportunity to gather together scientists with these different points of view, to compare approaches and results, and to highlight general problems.