What is Civil Engineering ?

Coastal Engineering

Hydraulics Laboratories:

Canadian Hydraulics Centre - (photos & information courtesy of CHC)

Multi-Directional Wave Basin - The multidirectional wave basin is a state-of-the-art facility for testing the performance of marine structures in the ocean environment.

Shallow Coastal Engineering Wave Basin - Shoreline bathymetries are reproduced in this basin to construct three-dimensional hydraulic models.

Variable Slope Flume - sluiced headbox with louvered tailgate and a hydraulically controlled 0 - 2% adjustable slope

Random Wave-Sediment Flume - servo-hydraulic, computer controlled, piston-type waveboard

photos courtesy of the HRTF at the University of Manitoba


Large Wave Flume - This flume is typically used for large-scale studies such as the testing of rubble-mound breakwaters and armour units, floating breakwaters, and coastal sediment processes such as the suspension of sediment under wave action, beach profile evolution, wave-generated bed-forms, bed roughness, and liquefaction of sand. (photos & information courtesy of CHC)

Coastal Models Basin (21m x 21m) equipped with an irregular wave generator, in which waves, tides and currents are simulated simultaneously on models with mobile beds. (photo & information courtesy of Queen's University Coastal Engineering Research Laboratory)

HR Wallingford is studying the flow of tides and currents using oranges and cucumbers as well as physical modelling using computers.

"10,000 waves a day scoured this 1:20 scale coastal defence barrier"

Food for Thought: 08/07/1999 issue of the New Civil Engineer

Scanned with permission of NCE