Texas A&M – Offshore Technology Research Center

The OTRC provides technology, expertise, and services needed for the development of offshore systems that enable the safe and economically viable exploitation of resources and technologies in deep and ultra-deep water. OTRC develops technology through a balanced program of basic and applied research projects that is focused in the following core technical areas: Characterization of the ocean environment, characterization of the seafloor environment, environmental forces on structures and foundation systems, structural responses and integrity, and advanced composite materials.
The OTRC basin measures 45 m x 100 m and is nearly 6 m deep. Its deep pit is adjustable to 16.8 m. It can produce regular, irregular, long-crested, focused, and short-crested waves up to 1 m high. It produces currents up to 0.61 m/s and winds up to 12 m/s. It has a towing carriage, video tracking system, and full data acquisition system.The OTRC basin is equipped to produce unidirectional, multidirectional regular and random waves. The basin can also generate wind conditions from any direction, and generate sheared current profiled from any direction.

Capabilities include:

• Fluid- structure Interactions
• Soil-structure Interactions
• Composite Materials and Structures
• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Modeling
• Finite Element Method (FEM) Modeling
• Non-linear Modeling of Storm Waves
• Experimental Measurement of Extreme Waves
• Risk Assessment Technologies
• Scale Model Testing

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Point of Contact: John Pappas - johnpappas@tamu.edu