Coastal and Hydraulic Engineering Research Laboratory is now equipped with a state-of-the-art piece of equipment. The research-grade wave/current flume is an invaluable tool for coastal, marine, and hydraulic engineering studies. The flume is capable of generating combined random waves and reversible currents to simulate a variety of real-world phenomena including those involving sediment transports. The flume can also be used for marine renewable energy projects as well as testing and calibrating energy harvesting devices. The wave/current flume is 25 m (80 ft) long, 1.5 m (5 ft) wide and 1.5 m (5 ft) high and is equipped with a piston-type wet-back wave maker, current-recirculation system and an advanced data acquisition system. Below is the summary of the flume specifications.

Wave Gage

 The flume is equipped with 16 Edinburgh Designs WG8USB resistive wave gages sampling water levels at a rate of up to 128 Hz.

Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV)

 Three Nortek Vectrino ADVs with a sampling rate of 200 Hz are available for 3D flow velocity field measurements.

Nortek Vectrino Profiler

The Vectrino Profiler is a profiling Velocimeter that can measure the 3D velocity at rates up to 100 Hz. It is primarily designed for laboratory use but has successfully found use also in field applications such as swash velocity measurements on the beach. The basic measurement technology is coherent Doppler processing, which is characterized by accurate data at high rates with no appreciable zero offset.

Nortek Vectrino Lab Velocimeter

The Vectrino is a high-resolution acoustic velocimeter used to measure 3D water velocity in a wide variety of applications from the laboratory to the ocean. The basis measurement technology is coherent Doppler processing, which is characterized by accurate data with no appreciable zero offset.

Pressure Sensors

10 high accuracy PCB-113B28 pressure sensors sampling pressure range of up to 50 psi at a frequency of 500 kHz are available for measuring hydrodynamic pressures.

Load Sensor

Two high precision PCB 208C03-500 lb compression-tension load sensors (load cells) are available for wave impact loads measurements

Bed Profiler

The lab is equipped with a state-of-the-art HR-Wallingford’s HRBP-1070bed profiling system. The bed profiling system is used to assess the effect waves and currents on mobile sediment beds. It utilizes a traverse system to position the profiler in a 2D or 3D environment and operates over 6 m x 1.5 m area both with and without water present. The system is equipped with both laser and touch-sensitive probes with an accuracy of ±0.5mm vertically and horizontally.