SHIPBUILDING AIDED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21345, 21 November 1932, Page 9

SHIPBUILDING AIDED

WAVE-MAKING APPARATUS

EXPERIMENTS IN ENGLAND

(Received November 20, 5.5 p.m.) British 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 simulating rough water so that the weather conditions in almost any ocean can be reproduced.

' The possibility of solving practical problems with the design, by experiments on models, was first shown by William Froude in 1870 and the largest shipbuilding firms subsequently privately erected tanks, but in 1911 a large tank was built at Tedchngton for the use of the British industry as a whole. A propeller tunnel, for tho investigation of propeller problems, was added later, and with the new tanks now installed, the equipment at Teddington is more complete than anywhere in the world.

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