Housed in the Jere A. Chase Ocean Engineering Lab’s High Bay, the wave/tow tank is approximately 120' long, 12' wide and 8' deep. It provides a 90' length in which test bodies can be towed, subjected to wave action, or both. Wave creation is possible using a hydraulic flapper-style wave-maker that can produce two-to-five second waves of maximum amplitude approximately 1.5'. Wave absorption is provided by a sawtooth style geo-textile construction that has an average 92% efficiency in the specified frequency range. The wave-maker software allows tank users to develop regular or random seas using a variety of spectra. A user interface, written in LabView, resides on the main control station PC and a wireless LAN network allows for communication between instrumentation and data acquisition systems.

For more information on the Wave Tank, please contact Laura Gustafson at laura.gustafson@unh.edu.

Students look on as waves are generated.

Wave action.