Louis Coetzee is a senior lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Pretoria. He graduated from the University of Pretoria with a degree in Civil Engineering in 2010, completed his BEng (Hons) degree in 2011, and MEng degree in Water Resource Engineering in 2012. He joined the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Pretoria in 2011 as a junior lecturer whilst pursuing his postgraduate studies and briefly left the academia from late 2012 until the end of 2020 to gain valuable design and construction experience as a consulting engineer. During this time he was also site engineer for the construction of the Neckartal Dam, Namibia’s largest dam from 2016 – 2019.

He completed his Ph.D. in 2019 by extending the Ogee spillway’s design relationship with the development of the VC-Ogee relationship which accommodates the effect of 3-dimensional flow. He has compiled numerous technical reports, conference and journal publications in the field of dam engineering. He has also co-presented courses and workshops on network analyses, pump station design, pipeline engineering, and flood hydrology.

Current teaching duties

• Supervising postgraduate students
• Supervising undergraduate final year research project students (SSC411)
• SCA420 - Computer Applications in Civil Engineering
• SHC310 - Hydraulics
• SKE220 - Civil engineering services
• SWP121 - Workshop practice
• Continuous Professional Development courses to industry (Pipeline optimization and design, Network design, Free-Surface Flow modelling, Flood hydrology, and stormwater modelling)

Current research interests

• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Compressible flow: Optimisation of air valve inlet 
  • Free surface flow [VOF]: The hydraulic assessment of CURVED AND OBLIQUE, SHARP CRESTED WEIRS (SCWs) under 3-dimensional flow conditions
  • Free surface flow [VOF]: Culvert improvement quantification
  • Free surface flow [VOF]: Verification of physical modelling results with numerical modelling of a Crump Weir
  • Eulerian multi-phase flow: Dam break verification of non-Newtonian tailings storage facilities (TSF) (i.e. tailings dams).
• Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI): Determining the effect of joint size vs. uplift pressure for chute spillways

Publications

A summary of his publications can be found on ResearchGate