The Harris Hydraulics Laboratory at the University of Washington is a fully equipped laboratory for teaching, research and testing in marine energy, environmental fluid mechanics, and related topics. The laboratory is used by researchers from departments across campus, including Civil and Environmental Engineering, Applied Physics Laboratory, Mechanical Engineering and Oceanography.
Explore this page for more details of these experimental areas. If you’re interested in gaining access to use any of the Harris facilities, please reach out to testing@pmec.us with details and consider applying to the U.S. Department of Energy’s TEAMER program.Â
The Alice C. Tyler flume is a free-surface water channel with independent control of flow speed, water depth, and water temperature. This allows the Reynolds and Froude numbers to be independently varied during turbine experiments. The flume is equipped with an active grid that can independently vary turbulence intensity and length scale. With the grid in a fully open position, turbulence intensity is relatively low (2-4%) and can be increased to > 15 %. The flume side walls and bottom are glass, providing optical access for flow diagnostics, including Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). Using existing instrumentation and data acquisition, cross-flow turbine rotors and axial-flow turbine blades can be easily tested.
The oscillation visualization tank is a water-filled acrylic cube with an open top. A linear oscillator can be used to drive test articles, such as heave plates, through strokes of controllable amplitude and period. During oscillation, a submersible (IP 68) 6-axis load cell can measure forces and torques on a test article, while position is tracked by an encoder. From this, phase-dependent and phase-independent estimates of hydrodynamic forces can be resolved. The acrylic walls allow optical access from all sides for qualitative and quantitative flow visualization. To date, this facility has been used primarily to study the hydrodynamics of heave plates and scale-model wave energy converter floats.
WASIRF is a wind-wave-current tank facility formerly located at the NASA Wallops Island Flight Facility. WASIRF is a laboratory testing tank designed to investigate wind-wave-current interactions. For marine energy applications, it can test relatively small prototype wave energy converters (<25 cm width recommended) or floats using the heave oscillator from the visualization tank.
If you’re interested in gaining access to use any of the Harris facilities, please reach out to testing@pmec.us with details and consider applying to the U.S. Department of Energy’s TEAMER program.
Read more from the UW Department of Civil Engineering’s Harris Hydraulics Laboratory facility page.
