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Welcome to the Advanced STEM Research Class!
Wave Tank System
Wave Tank System
Goal: The purpose of the advanced wave tank project is to design and build a miniature wave flume that can be used to study the ocean wave phenomena, the effectiveness of shoreline protection structures and the interaction of waves and shorelines.
Wave Tank System: The diagram below illustrates the structure of the wave tank system. It consists of four major components:
Computer: A laptop computer is running an app that performs both control and monitor functions. The app provides a friendly graphical user interface (GUI) such that users can intuitively choose the types of waves they want to generate and set up the parameters (e.g., amplitude, frequency, etc.) of the waves. It can turn on or off the wave maker. Users can also monitor the generated waves in real-time through a camera and show the numeric measurements through computer vision automatically. Advanced features can include the quantitative measurement of the interactions between the waves and the shorelines protection structures (e.g., breakwaters, seawalls, etc.).
Wave Maker: A wave maker consists of a microcontroller board (e.g., Arduino Leonardo), motor controllers, motors and a wave-making device. The microcontroller will communicate with the laptop through a serial port (USB), and operate the wave-making device through motors and motor controllers. The wave-making device may have wide variety of designs depends on the types of waves needed to be created. It may also have modular design where different shapes of paddles can be installed to meet different functions.
Wave Tank: A wave tank is a wave flume made of plexiglass. The dimensions of the wave flume should fit onto the wooden table in the STEM Lab such that no extra stand is required. The wave tank will have three sessions: wave maker section, wave section and overflow section. There should be an area near one end to accommodate or mount the wave maker. On the other end, there will be an overflow section to measure the amount of water overflowing the shoreline protection structure.
Wave Measurement: An USB webcam with stand will be installed to perform the wave measurement through computer vision techniques. The vision algorithm running on the laptop will extract measurement information from the real-time video and display the results on the same app.
Wave Flume Design
Wave Flume Design
Wave flume design is a complex process. In order to specify and design a wave flume, several aspects need to be considered. Here is a list of tasks to help you breakdown the complex design problem into smaller and more specific tasks:
Functional Requirements - What types of experiments are we going to perform on the wave flume? For example, testing the effects of different seawall and breakwaters geometric designs. [Deliverable: a list of use cases associated with our shorelines reconfiguration project.]
Wave Requirements - What types of waves need to be generated? What are their specifications (e.g., wave heights, wave lengths, etc.)? Create a list of waves needed to be generated based on the functional requirements to reflect the waves that will impact the NYC urban shorelines. [Deliverable: a list of waves and their specifications associated with NYC urban shorelines configurations.]
Wave Flume - Mechanical dimension of the wave flume. The design should base on the wave requirements and wave maker functionality. The mechanical drawings should include all dimensions, 3D isometric drawings and 2D orthographic projections. A free CAD software - Autodesk Fusion 360 can be downloaded from their website (link). [Deliverable: a 3D CAD model and mechanical drawings of the wave flume design using Autodesk Fusion 360.]
Wave Maker - Types (e.g., plunger, cam, piston, etc.) and specification of wave maker based on the types of waves need to be generated. Modular design is encouraged as needed to meet various wave requirements. [Deliverable: a table of wave makers associated with different wave requirements.]
Wave Absorber - A wave absorber design (e.g., parabolic surface, inclined perforated plates, etc.) to reduce the reflection of waves. [Deliverable: a 3D CAD model and mechanical drawings of the wave absorber design using Autodesk Fusion 360.]
Accessories - What types of accessories are needed for our experiments? For example, an incline to simulate beach, sand & rocks, a set of existing seawall models, etc. [Deliverable: a list of accessories and 3D CAD models and mechanical drawings of the accessory design using Autodesk Fusion 360.]
Actuator Design - Motor, motor control, microcontroller, and wave maker driving mechanism design. [Deliverable: a list of off-the-shelf parts (BOM); a calculation of motor power requirements; an electric schematic drawings of the microcontroller, motor and motor controller; wave maker driving mechanism design using Autodesk Fusion 360.]
Microcontroller Code - Receive commands from users through a control interface on the laptop. The code running on the microcontroller will convert them into motor control signals. [Deliverable: an Arduino code converting user control commands into physical commands to drive the motor.]
Wave Measurement - Which properties of waves need to be measured and how to use computer vision technology to detect them automatically? Use a webcam to monitor the wave tank and the software running on the laptop will process the video and extract wave parameters. [Deliverable: a list of measurement parameters and a MATLAB code processing real-time video and display measurement of wave parameters.]
User Interface - A user interface panel application running on a laptop to integrate control and monitor functions of the wave tank. [Deliverable: a user interface design and an app to run all the functions using MATLAB App Designer.]
Scaling Effect - Since we are building a miniature wave tank, we have to understand the scaling effects on the potential wave experiments. [Deliverable: a list of issues caused by the scaling effects and the strategies to cope with them.]
The attached introductory documents (click the images on the right) are selected papers and websites of general background for wave flume design to help you start the process. You can learn a lot from what people have done before in academia and industry.
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