BOONE – An Appalachian State University faculty member’s interest in understanding how erosion works has earned him an award from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

Dr. Chris Thaxton, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, received the 2008 Alan Berman Research Publication Award for outstanding contributions to the advancement of scientific understanding of granular flows and coastal erosion modeling. He was honored during a dinner at Bolling Air Force Base in March.

Thaxton, along with colleagues at the Marine Geosciences Division of the Naval Research Laboratory in Mississippi, developed a new model that simulates how sand granules are sorted by water – which determines where sand goes.  The model can be applied to research in such areas as predicting and controlling shipping channel stability, characterizing landing zones for U.S. Navy SEAL teams, and determining the abundance and distribution of sand and sediment along beaches.

“To more accurately predict the complex dynamics of sediment and water, we first have to know what happens on the micro scale,” explained Thaxton, who has taught at Appalachian since 2004.

His model reproduces the “brazil nut effect,” in which larger grains of sand tend to migrate to the top of a sand bed. This means that the larger grains are more “available” for transport and tend to migrate longer distances than the smaller grains as waves and currents pass overhead.

Thaxton’s work was initially presented at the 2006 International Conference on Coastal Engineering and since has been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. He has been researching similar simulations for streams that can be applied in issues related to mountain topography.

Thaxton earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from N.C. State University and bachelor’s degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is program director of Appalachian’s Professional Science Master’s degree program in engineering physics.

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