Absorbing wave makers and wide tanks

Abstract

Experiments aimed at generating power from sea waves used models which sometimes reflected waves back to the wave-maker. The difficulty was avoided by changing the wave-maker control system so that it could absorb reflections. A wide tank using a bank of absorbing wave-makers is being used to test more advanced models in seas of controlled angular spread. A crude measure of crest-length can be obtained from measurement of the correlation coefficients between wave-gauges at different separations.