This Massive Wave Machine Is for Science, Not Fun.
THE STORY GOES like this: A
little Dutch boy spots a hole in a dike, and sticks his finger in to plug it
up. He stays there for days and nights, ultimately saving his country from
watery ruin. Apocryphal? Well, yeah. But the people of the Low Country have
been preoccupied with keeping the ocean at bay for centuries, an interest that
has only intensified with the threat of climate change. That means designing
better infrastructure—which is why a Dutch company, Deltares, has built a
machine that generates the
world’s biggest artificial waves.
Their
machine, the Delta Flume,
works like this: Pistons rhythmically shove around more than two million
gallons of water in a 900-foot-long concrete trough, like a giant toddler
splashing back
and forth in a
bathtub. Eventually, the waves double back on themselves to form monsters up to
15 feet high.
The project
isn’t about making really big waves for the sake of making really big waves,
though, says Dan Cox, a coastal engineering professor at Oregon State
University, which houses the largest
research wave machine in
North America. The purpose of wave machines is pretty simple: to see how
human-made structures—breakwaters, seawalls, giant concrete blocks—stand up to
crashing waves and giant storms before millions of people trust them to
protect them from the elements. For wave machines, “bigger is better, because you
don’t have to worry about scale effects,” Cox says. A giant machine sidesteps
factors like surface tension and sand grain size that, at the wrong scale,
could screw up results.
The Delta Flume comes as part of decades of disaster prep in the
Netherlands. The Dutch have spent the last half-century constructing big
flood-control infrastructure including theDelta Works, a country-wide network
of dams, dikes, locks, levees, and storm surge barriers. They closely measure
rainfall and water levels, and open and close their floodgates accordingly.
They’ve designated giant sacrificial areas they can let flood, and have made water management plans for the rest of the century. And they
kill the muskrats that nest in the levees. “The Dutch have written the book on
modern coastal flood protection,” says Patrick Lynett, a coastal
engineer at the University of Southern California.
Contrast
that with the US, which focuses more on flooding relief than prevention. “We
rely more on beach nourishment and avoidance, while Holland takes the ‘hold the
line’ approach,” Cox says. That’s a problem that’ll get worse with climate
change: South Carolina faced flooding earlier this month from rains NOAA called
a “thousand-year deluge,” and New
Orleans, Miami, and other coastal cities are looking at inundation in a
couple centuries. But we don’t have that same massive infrastructure the
Netherlands does, Cox says, which is worrying. America has some catching
up to do, and no little Dutch boy is going to come save the country.
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