Brief Overview of HYCEL

In the Hydraulic and Coastal Engineering Laboratory (HYCEL) at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Hanyang University, Korea, many numerical methodologies and experimental approaches are mainly utilized to study the propagation and associated run-up process of tsunamis, and generation of an inundation map. Based on numerical techniques such as the finite difference method, finite volume method and boundary element method, various principal hydrodynamic problems such as the saltwater intrusion in an estuary and a canal, countermeasures against natural disasters, the submerged breakwater with the Bragg resonant reflection concept and the study of propagation and deformation of ocean waves have primarily been investigated at HYCEL.

Moreover, the motion of tidal current near an estuary and nearshore, the interaction between waves and coastal structures and the examination and design of the coastal structure have been studied by using the numerical methods at HYCEL. HYCEL is also satisfied for all kinds of laboratory experiments concerned about hydraulic and coastal engineering. It has one office (80m²) and one laboratory (400m²), where the two-dimensional wave flume has a length of 32.5m, a width of 0.6m, and a maximum depth of 1.1m with a piston-type wave generator at the one end and a wave absorber at the other end. Six capacitance probe type wave recorders are installed along the flume, which are able to measure wave heights in experiments. Most of two-dimensional experiments are able to be conducted at HYCEL in order to understand the run-up and run-down of long waves, study the generation of both regular and irregular waves, and inspect the stability of a breakwater.

A Laser Doppler Velocimeter (LDV) and an Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) are possessed to measure mean velocity field and turbulence characteristics in each experiment. Also, a digitizer (CalComp Drawing Board III), four workstations (Compaq, 2GHz Xeon processor) and several personal computers are ready for the analysis of data measured from experiments.

Dr. Cho, Yong-Sik, Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Hanyang University, got PhD from Cornell University in 1994. The title of his thesis is Numerical Simulations of Tsunami Propagation and Run-up (Advisor: Professor Philip L.-F. Liu). He had continuously been employed at Cornell University as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate after graduation. From March 1997, he had been employed as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Sejong University, Korea and then moved to Hanyang University on March 2000. From February 2003 to January 2005, he had served as the Chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Hanyang University. Professor Cho is now serving as the Director of Innovative Global Construction Leader Education Center, one of government enterprises provided by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Korea.

Presently, Professor Cho has published 67 papers in prominent international journals enrolled in the Science Citation Index (SCI) such as  Journal of Fluid Mechanics (impact factor 2.283), Physics of Fluids (impact factor 1.638), Journal of Geophysical Research (impact factor 3.082), Coastal Engineering (impact factor 2.404), Journal of Coastal Research (impact factor 1.366), Journal of Hydraulic Research (impact factor 0.801), Journal of Engineering Mechanics, ASCE (impact factor 0.980) and Ocean Engineering (impact factor 0.966). He has also presented 141 papers in domestic journals and about 451 conference papers in proceedings of international and domestic conferences.

In particular, Professor Cho has awarded for the best paper of the year in KSCE (1997), the best paper of the 10th Science and Technology Societies (2000), the best paper of the year in KWRA (2002), the best researcher of the year in KWRA (2005) and the best paper of the year in KOSHAM(2006), the best researcher of the year in KSCE (2010), the best paper of the 21st Science and Technology Societies (2011) and the best researcher of the year in KFWSES (Korea Federation of Water Science and Engineering Societies, 2012). Professor Cho has also honored with the best teaching professor of the year of 2005 and 2011, the best research professor of the year of 2006.