Welcome to O'Brien

The BEFL facilities are located in O'Brien Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.  The facilities in O'Brien include an office for graduate students, a workshop for field equipment, and various laboratory equipment including several large flumes.

O'Brien Hall is located on the North side of campus next to Davis Hall, home of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.  [Map]

Computer Lab

The computing lab in O'Brien consists of several PCs and a DEC-Alpha Unix machine.  The Unix machine is useful for numerical modeling, particularly with the Tidal Residual Intertidal Mudflat, or TRIM model developed by Vincenzo Casulli and available for use at the BEFL.  TRIM is a semi-implicit finite difference scheme that can be used to simulate three-dimensional estuarine hydrodynamics and scalar transport with wetting and drying of mudflats during changing tidal conditions.  The PCs are used for Matlab and other data analyses, and gazing out the window deep in thought is an essential part of the research process.

The bars keep thieves out, grad students in

Experimental Equipment

On the first floor of O'Brien there is also a workshop for storing, preparing, testing, and maintaining the collection of the field equipment.  The first floor is also home to two large flumes (including the the "Einstein flume" with a sediment trap) and a wave tank.

The department recently installed of a new instructional work station in O'Brien for use with undergraduate fluid mechanics laboratories.

Professors Sobey and Stacey watch as Dean Newton cuts the ribbon on the Fluid Mechanics Work Station.

Libraries

We are located in the same building as the Water Resources Center Archives (WRCA), a part of the UC Berkeley library system that specializes in all things wet.  The WRCA has a substantial collection of reference materials relating to water in general and to California water issues in particular, and the staff is always resourceful and helpful.

The Kresge Engineering Library is located in a building next to the BEFL, with a comprehensive collection of engineering books and journals.