http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/navy-tests-ships-indoor-ocean-180952431/?no-istThe Navy Tests Its Ships in This Indoor Ocean
New technology can precisely recreate eight open-water conditions
By Abigail Tucker
Smithsonian Magazine
September 2014
Switching testing scenarios used to take 20 minutes. Rolling waters can now be calmed in just 30 seconds. (Ryan Hanyok / U.S. Navy)
"There are no freak waves in the world,” says naval architect Jon Etxegoien. “They are all predictable.”
He’s strolling the shores of an indoor ocean—a 12-million-gallon, football-field-size pool at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. A two-star admiral in crisp khaki leans on the railing nearby, watching obedient waves plunge and leap like show dolphins.
The recent installation of 216 state-of-the-art electronically-controlled wave boards has made this the most sophisticated scientific wave-testing basin of its size in the world. Scaled-down fiberglass models, cruisers the size of canoes, ride waves that max out at a few feet high. But it’s the motion of the ocean that matters. The hinged wave boards, each with its own motor synced up to software, can precisely recreate eight ocean conditions (from flat calm to typhoonlike) across all seven seas, pushing the water and moving up and down like giant piano keys whose scales and chords are waves.
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