Southampton plesiosaur experiment

A four-axis gantry-mounted motion control system capable of flapping two flippers in a recirculating flume tank while measuring the hydrodynamic forces.

Dates: 2012-2017  |  Commissioner: EPSRC,NERC, Ginko Investments

My doctoral research at the Univeristy of Southampton required a custom-built system that could flap two flippers in a recirculating flume tank while recording forces on the flippers and capturing flow visulalisation. The control system was written in LabVIEW and was run on a National Instruments cRIO system.
A view of the plesiosaur experiement in Southampton
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A side view of the plesiosaur experiement in Southampton
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A picture of the Southampton plesiosaur experiment from below, showing the flow visualisation
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The electrical enclosure holding the control system

Keywords: Plesiosaurs, fluid mechanics, engineering