The largest wave tank at the Lir National Ocean Test Facility was commissioned for operational use on Monday, April 25th. It was the first time that a 1 m high wave was generated in the tank.
This wave would be equivalent to the highest recorded wave off the west coast of Ireland at a scale of 1:20. To give some perspective, at this scale, a person would stand at less than 100 mm tall.
Lir National Ocean Test Facility (NOTF) is a custom designed test facility that operates within MaREI and houses Ireland’s only infrastructure for small to medium scale laboratory testing of ocean and maritime systems. There are four tanks at various scales and depths for emulation of ocean waves, currents and wind. Lir NOTF also includes a variety of bench test rigs for electrical, power take off and mooring system testing along with a microgrid/on grid infrastructure for test of generation, control, power take off, storage, grid integration, power quality, subsea transmission and fault synthesis.
The Lir NOTF research infrastructure allows for the wave-to-wire design of wind, wave and tidal renewable energy devices.
Please click on link below to see video of wave tanks in operation.