AOE@VT Makes Waves in Hampton

As detailed on our main page, the AOE@VT team is distributed geographically across Virginia. Team leadership and structural model assembly takes place at the Advanced Research Institute in Hampton, while the Power-Take-Off (PTO) physical modeling group and integrated Numerical Modeling group are based in the Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering on our main campus in Blacksburg.

The Advanced Research Institute in Hampton is located on the campus of the National Institute of Aerospace (www.nianet.org). Our facilities include a high-bay lab with a still water tank that has a molded depth of 5 ft and a waterplane area of 7ft by 7ft. We inherited the lab and its tank from former Virginia Tech Associate Professor Leigh McCue, who last year was appointed Executive Director of the American Society of Naval Engineers (www.navalengineers.org). While here, Dr. McCue used the tank in her research as well as giving local middle schoolers hands-on experience building and testing remotely operated vehicles in summer STEM camps.

By adding synchronized, pulsating pumps to the tank (commercially sold to simulate wave flow in saltwater aquariums for coral-growing enthusiasts), we’ve been able to create a quite respectable standing wave having a height of 8 to 9 cm and a resonant period of 1.2 sec, which approximates one of the 1:50 monochromatic waves used in Stage 2 of the Wave Energy Prize competition. See our standing wave tank in action at https://youtu.be/dFqhqPvl8fg.