As a Proceedings journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Engineering and Computational Mechanics publishes refereed papers and other short contributions on fundamental applied mechanics in civil engineering. As a member of the editorial advisory board, I am happy to present you two comprehensive, fundamental papers on fluid mechanical problems, both of which, however, use methods having great potential of applications in other fields. In addition, this issue contains two book reviews, showcasing engineering applications in two very distinct environments; the hydraulic lab and the arctic offshore environment. This shows the large variety of civil engineering, and I hope you share my enthusiasm while reading the papers and reviews. These papers show that there are still numerous methods, and processes to be discovered and analysed. I would be happy to receive the reader's views on that prospect.
The first paper (Wang and Zhou, 2014) is concerned with improvements of a Lattice Boltzmann model, thus contributing to the state-of-the-art research topics in that field, such as (a) the development of mesh-free Lagrangian particle methods of the type of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH; see for example Engineering and Computational Mechanics, Volume 166, Issue EM1) or, as presented here, (b) the development of Eulerian particle methods for kinetic equations like the Boltzmann equation. The authors code hereby solves propagation and collision processes of microscopic particles over a mesh, instead of solving conservation equations of macroscopic properties, such as mass or momentum, as in conventional computational fluid dynamics methods. The presented model considers general axisymmetric flows with or without rotation, which has also been extended to model non-Newtonian fluids. The two applications used to validate and discuss the model are the Taylor–Couette flow (which has several engineering applications, such as oil drilling) and an application for an axisymmetric laminar cold-flow jet with high-amplitude forcing.
The second paper (Sobey, 2014) exploits potential improvements of models for the prediction of short water wave evolution in the coastal environment. It is focused on depth-integrated and phase-resolving water wave evolution equations. As such, it contributes to the discussion on which simplifications (namely, a better selection of dependent variables or a better representation of the non-linear influences) should be favoured to be valid in both shallow and deep waters. The author presents and discusses a new set of phase-resolving integral wave evolution equations and compares those with Boussinesq-style equations. The modified system has been used to illustrate four examples of wave evolution computing numerical solutions and comparing them with near-exact predictions from steady wave theory for shallow to deep waters. The first example is a steady progressive wave in shallow–transitional water. The second example shows wetting and drying in shallow water on a uniform beach. This example is well in line with papers from the last themed issue of Engineering and Computational Mechanics (Volume 167, Issue EM3) on tsunami modelling. The third example illustrates dispersive separation of an initial mound in transitional–deep water, and the fourth example investigates the effect of currents on waves.
The review by O'Donoghue (2014) review of Users Guide to Physical Modelling and Experimentation: Experience of the HYDRALAB Network gives insight into the contents and suggests potential readership. He highlights the potential of the book to provide guidance on best practice in the design and execution of physical models and laboratory experiments relating to coastal and fluvial hydraulics, based on works carried out within HYDRALAB projects of the EU's sixth framework programme for research.
The review from Brennan (2014) of Arctic Offshore Engineering emphasises the detailed examples of field tests and case studies presented in the book, and recommends it especially to ‘learn about what we do not know about engineering in the Arctic'.
