Principal Investigator Alexandra Techet
Project Website http://web.mit.edu/mhl/www/Impact.html
he purpose of the water surface impact WebLab is to teach marine hydrodynamic concepts through laboratory experiences. WebLab allows users to remotely run surface impact experiments and to process acquired data off-line with additional supporting data from computational simulations available on-line. The learning objectives include conceptualizing the physics of free surface impact and then interpreting the output data to arrive at desired conclusions.
The design of the impact WebLab allows for the study of a variety of object shapes such as spheres, cylinders, wedges, or blocks. Such input parameters include impact velocity, angle of impact, video capture rates and choice of instrumentation.
The WebLab impact laboratory setup consists of an automated loading mechanism that releases objects between tow rotating wheels, which then shoots the objects into a tank of water at speeds of up to 20 m/s. The loading and shooting mechanisms are connected to an aluminum frame which is supported above the tank by a steel support structure. The platform has two degrees of freedom, rotational and linear, allowing for different angles of impact.