Arrival experimental setup ‘The Metronome’
December 11th, 2014
Before my PhD even started, the brand-new setup for our experiments (The Metronome) arrived by truck. It was pretty impressive, especiall when the flume was lifted off the truck and needed to be manoeuvred through the doors with only a few centimetres to spare. To make it even more difficult, inside, the setup needed to be turned 90 degrees to be positioned in the predestined spot. After a long day of moving centimetre by centimetre, The Metronome finally arrived at the right location.
The experimental setup is a tidal flume that will be able to tilt in two directions to simulate ebb and flood flow. This new mechanism solves many scaling issues for small-scale tidal experiments. Because we scale down the water depth, this normally results in smaller flow velocities, though the grains cannot be scaled down equally due to the cohesion of small particles. Because we now tilt the flume in two directions, we exaggerate the bed gradient, which increases flow velocities. Exaggerated bed gradients have actually already been used in many small-scale river experiments for a long time; however, now we tilt the slope for bi-directional flow.
Article published in the DUB about the arrival of ‘The Metronome’. Click here for the full article.