Join us for a ‘get your hands wet’ tank testing best practice workshop before the start of ICOE-2016

The Institute for Energy Systems and the FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility at the University of Edinburgh will jointly host a practical and best practice ‘how to do tank testing’ workshop the day before ICOE (22nd February 2016) at the University’s Science & Engineering campus in Edinburgh.

The workshop is aimed at those with little or no experience of scale model testing, but who need an understanding of tank testing best practice in order to inform or better plan an upcoming test campaign – for example for Wave Energy Scotland or the US Dept of Energy Wave Energy Prize. The one-day workshop will also be of interest to those investing, funding or insuring new ocean technologies.

The workshop itself will commence with classroom based introductions to the objectives of testing, how to design a test campaign for optimum results, and what can and cannot be inferred from test tank results when scaling up to the real world. Participants will be introduced to the University’s recently upgraded ‘curved tank’ before completing some practical hands-on tank testing at the £10.3m FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility. This will involve a hands on introduction to model installation, instrumentation (including motion capture), data acquisition, health and safety considerations, the generation of sea states, and more.

Start/finish times are set to allow travel on the morning of the event and to tie in with the pre-conference drinks reception at FloWave starting at 6pm. To ensure maximum benefit for participants, numbers will be restricted to 18. A minimum number of 6 is required in order to run the workshop.

A nominal cost for the event is £120 to cover the cost of providing the training, and lunch is included.

Commenting on the plan for the workshop FloWave Chief Executive Officer Stuart Brown said: “Often we find that smaller companies come to us with only limited practical experience of tank testing, and therefore are somewhat unaware of both the opportunities and pitfalls that come with scale testing of new designs. This is particularly the case for those designs that are, for want of a better way of putting it, ‘fresh off the drawing board’.”

“Naturally our Engineering team are used to this and regularly ‘hand-hold’ companies and research users through this ‘pre-test engineering’ process to ensure the best outcomes for the testing being carried out, but this ‘learning while doing’ approach can sometimes be inefficient. This year, since ICOE is right on our doorstep here in Edinburgh, we decided to hold a practical ‘get your hands wet’ workshop to help technology and project developers, as well as those observing, judging and even investing in those technologies, to better understand the ‘state of the art’ of physical tank testing. That way we hope to both educate potential users before they get to us, and accelerate their journey through the ‘design-test-prove’ early life-cycle stage.

“I am certain that participants will learn a lot from the workshop. More than that I am sure they will go away with their heads and hearts full of the opportunity tank testing represents, and from there develop some of the best new clean energy technologies destined for the ocean.”

The workshop is an official side event to the ICOE conference and is open to delegates and potential FloWave clients. Please click this link to register for the workshop: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tank-testing-best-practice-workshop-tickets-20857611678?ref=ebtnebtckt