TESTS . WITH MODELS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 49, 21 November 1932, Page 9

TESTS . WITH MODELS

Shipbuilding Research NEW EXPERIMENTAL TANK (Received Nov. 20, 5.5 p.m.) Official Wireless Rugby, NOV. 19. Mr. Stanley Baldwin opened a new experimental tank at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, built at a cost of £45,000, to provide additional facilities for shipbuilding research. It is 678 feet long and 20 feet wide and is equipped with apparatus for wave making and for simulating rough water so that the weather conditions of almost any ocean can be reproduced. The possibility of solving practical problems of design by experiments on models was first shown by William Fronde in 1870, and the largest shipbuilding firms thereafter privately erected tanks, but in 1911 a large tank was built at Teddington for the use of the British industry as a whole. A propeller tunnel for Investigation of propeller problems was added later, and with the new tank now installed the equipment at Teddington is more complete than anywhere else in the world.

Experiments in the tanks are carried out with wax models, and immense savings, particularly in fuel consumption, have been effected by modifications in design suggested by these tests.