ACES

Large Wave-Current Flume

The South Alabama wave-current flume (Armfield + HR Wallingford) consists of a steel frame, stainless steel bed, and glass-walled working section that is 17.5 meters long, 1.5 meters wide, and 1.0 meters deep. Stainless steel headwork and tailwork tanks extend from either end of the working section for managing flow recirculation through the two variable speed, glass-lined pumps. The pumps are capable of producing volumetric flowrates up to 110 l/s and can recirculate particles having diameters up to 3000 microns. A piston-style wavemaker at the upstream end of the working section is capable of producing monochromatic, spectral, solitary, and focused waves with heights up to 40 cm and frequencies ranging from 0.2 to 2 Hz. The wavemaker can also reproduce a user-provided free surface time series. The HR Wallingford custom designed wavemaker has two sliding “windows” near the lower portion of the bulkhead to accommodate recirculating currents in collinear wave-current experiments. Operational tank depths range from 10 to 75 cm.

Wave Basin

The South Alabama wave basin consists of a 9-m long, 6-m wide, and 1-m deep reinforced concrete basin with a unidirectional wavemaker at one end and a real sand beach at the other. The wave basin is capable of producing regular and irregular waves in one direction only. The range of wave heights and periods is nominally 5 cm < H < 40 cm and 0.75 s < T < 4 s, respectively. The basin can be reconfigured to support numerous types of experiments and measurements including beach and dune erosion/deposition; wave-structure interaction; wave transformations; and many other applications.  

The Center maintains a host of equipment and instruments for coastal monitoring and mapping. Our field capabilities include nearshore mapping of bathymetry, currents, and basic water quality parameters; continuous monitoring of water levels, waves, currents, and water quality parameters; and basic beach profile, topographic, and hydrographic surveying (n.b. the Center does not offer professional land surveying or professional engineering services). Shallow water and nearshore surveys and/or mapping can be conducted from a personal watercraft, kayak, or remote control catamaran. We also have access to large vessels through the Dauphin Island Sea Lab if needed. The Center has numerous CTDs, ADCPs, wave gauges, tide gauges, water quality sondes, and GNSS RTK surveying systems to carry out continuous or opportunistic monitoring campaigns. 

The Center staff possess expertise in developing, applying, and analyzing the results of high fidelity coastal hydraulic and hydrodynamic models. With access to high performance computing resources, we have the ability to apply numerical models across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Our staff routinely apply models to simulate tides, circulation, waves, storm surge, sediment transport, and morphological evolution of the coast (including shoreline change). We also have the ability to model pollutant/contaminant transport in the coastal ocean. Additional capabilities include the ability to model hydraulics and transport within coastal watersheds to simulate the interactions between rivers and the sea. Though not a complete list, we most routinely apply the following models: XBeach, SBeach, ADCIRC, SWAN, STWAVE, BOUSS-2D, CMS-Flow, CMS-Wave, ADH, SRH-2D, and HEC-RAS. We are currently expanding our capabilities to include Delft3D and OpenFOAM.