Water flow under controlled conditions

A multitude of biological processes are influenced by the effects of flow of water. This also applies to abrasion of materials or corrosion of metals in maritime applications. A test run in a flow channel produces physically clear and reproducible measuring results for the appraisal of material development. Interferences of biological processes caused by the impacts of currents become experimentally observable.

Advantages

• All measurements are carried out under controlled physical conditions with reproducible results and allow for high quality technical interpretation of results.
• Customers can compose measuring protocols in order to simulate the environmental parameters of the intended application. According to the object size, incoming flow velocity between 0,2 – 12 m/s can be simulated. Selected parameters include flow duration, temperature, salinity and turbidity.
• The physical nature of the measuring results (parametrization) allows for the transfer of results into ecological modelling programs.

Application examples

• Stress test or self-cleaning test under the effects of inflow (foulage release) and identification of resulting forces at various flow velocities and material removal of grown biomass.
• Identification of abrasion rates of dissolvable layers (e.g. coatings or sacrificial anodes).