Behind the Scenes: Imperial's Wave Basin

Built in 2003, Imperial's Wave Basin provides researchers with 360,000 litres of water to explore how waves behave.

1 offshore engineering

How offshore structures interact with waves is of keen interest to the oil and gas industry. The basin is in the Skempton Building and is equipped with pressure transducers, laser sensors and video imaging to observe how waves and structures interact. Here, civil engineering students (right) are getting ready to test how waves hit a platform deck from below, using a model jacket structure that will be fixed to the basin floor.

2 marine renewable energy

Dr Johannes Spinneken (PhD Civil and Environmental Engineering 2009) on the left, is looking for ways to harness wave energy, which could meet up to a quarter of the UK’s current electricity demand. His research challenge: how to translate the large but relatively slow forces of waves into the smaller, faster forces that drive electricity generators? The answer may lie in snakelike energy converters that float on the water surface and absorb energy along the crest of the wave as it passes.

3 making waves

Measuring 20m x 12m with a depth of 1.5m, the basin fills in just one hour with over 1,000 bath tubs of water, recreating ocean events at a scale of 1:100. The still water in this picture reflects the calm before the storm that will be whipped up by programming the numbered red paddles to create waves of specific frequency and direction. The articulated basin floor can be modified to replicate conditions for deep water and shallow coastal engineering.

Photo credit: Dave Guttridge/The Photographic Unit

This article first appeared in Imperial Magazine, Issue 36. You can view and download a whole copy of the magazine, from www.imperial.ac.uk/imperialmagazine.