
University of Iowa
Facility Overview
IIHR’s extensive state-of-the-art facilities and instrumentation at the University of Iowa support research and education in the hydrosciences, including a wide range of physical and numerical modeling and field data collection projects.








Facility Capabilities
Hydraulics Towing Tank Located in the lower level of C. Maxwell Stanley Hydraulics Lab, the IIHR towing tank has provided researchers with more than 50 years of experimental data. When noted researcher Lou Landweber left the David Taylor Model Basin (DTMB) and joined IIHR in the mid-1950s, he helped build IIHR into one of the nation’s leading ship hydrodynamics research programs. Researchers here have focused mainly on ship hydrodynamics, with an emphasis on free-surface flows as they relate to resistance and propulsion. However, present towing tank work focuses on seakeeping and maneuvering problems, as the traditionally separate areas of resistance and propulsion, seakeeping, and maneuvering begin to merge and CFD methods improve and are able to handle increasingly complex ship hydrodynamics problems. Dimensions: Length: 100 m, Width: 3 m, Height: 3.5 m Max Depth: 3 m Capabilities: WEC and TEC hydrodynamics, CFD model validation.
2 Facility Capabilities
- Flume
- Wave Basin
Contact
Hydraulics Wave Basin The six plunger-type wave makers are at the east end of the wave basin and a 7.8×20-m2 wave beach is at the west end at an 11.3º tilt angle. Sidewall-wave dampers along the north/south basin walls are moved upwards/downwards during and between testing to shorten the time interval between tests. A dock and work platform above the wave beach are used for test setup. A 12-ton main carriage moves on a railway system in the x-direction (east-west); a 2 ton sub carriage moves on the rack-gear in the y-direction (south-north); and a turntable attached to the sub-carriage moves on the ring-gear in the turning direction in the xy-plane. The operator control panels for the carriage and wavemaker are on the second floor on the north side of the building. The wave maker system consists of six wedge-shaped plungers aligned end-to-end with minimal clearance between ends. Each plunger is 1.2 meters high, 3.3 meters wide and 0.8 meters thick and submerged 0.7 meters in calm water. The plunger stroke is adjustable up to 250 mm for plunger frequencies less than 0.62 Hz, where the maximum stroke is restricted to 77.5 mm at the maximum plunger frequency of 2.0 Hz. The wave maker system has two operational modes. The first mode generates regular waves by using pre-set and fixed plunger amplitude and frequency values. The waves are generated in this mode with all six plungers moving simultaneously with the same amplitude and frequency and the same initial phase. The second mode generates irregular waves, where a train of analogue voltage signals of arbitrary waveform are input to each plunger. The wave makers were calibrated to meet the International Maritime Organization standards. Dimensions: Length: 40 m, Width: 20 m, Height: 4.3 m Depth: 3 m Capabilities : Power take-off testing, Operational modeling, Wave resource characterization, WEC hydrodynamics.
2 Facility Capabilities
- Flume
- Wave Basin






















































