The Fluids Laboratory has a total floor area of over 500m2, and is home to our 30 metre wave flume and a number of specialised water flumes. It is also incorporates the Convection Laboratory.
The facility is primarily used for undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and for thesis and capstone projects.
Major facilities in the general Fluids Laboratory include:
Our Wave Flume, measured at 30 metres long by one metre wide and one metre deep, is made from high-quality glass panels with a beach installed at one end to minimise wave reflection.
It is equipped with the Edinburgh Designs piston-type wave generator which allows generation of regular and irregular waves. The wave generator measures the reflective wave and corrects the paddle motion to absorb it. The resultant wave field is totally predictable even with highly reflective models.
Irregular wave fields can be generated by empirical functions built into the Edinburgh Designs OCEAN software (including Pierson Moskowitz, Bretschneider and Jonswap spectra) or user defined power spectral densities. Spectral peak frequencies generated range between 0.40–2.0Hz, equivalent to full-scale wave periods of 5–20s.
Wave height and water level measurements are made using resistance or capacitance wave probes, available in a range of lengths from 200mm to 1000mm.
Our Convection Laboratory consists of two purpose-built laboratories, each constructed with insulated wall panels and air conditioning to provide a thermally-stable environment.
It is equipped with a variety of experimental rigs ranging from large and small side-heated convection experiments, thermal boundary layer transition experiments, sloping bottom tanks for reservoir related projects, and building thermal control and natural ventilation experiments.
Major facilities in the Convection Laboratory include:
