Model Testing - Bringing the Ocean into the Laboratory

Hydrodynamic model testing, the principle of bringing the ocean into the laboratory to study the behaviour of the ocean itself and the response of man-made structures in the ocean in reduced scale, has been known for centuries. Due to an insufficient understanding of the physics involved, however, the early model tests often gave incomplete or directly misleading results.This keynote lecture deals with some of the possibilities and problems within the field of hydrodynamic and hydraulic model testing.