Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT
Arena, F. and Barbaro, G., 2013. The Natural Ocean Engineering Laboratory, NOEL, in Reggio Calabria, Italy: A commentary and announcement. Journal of Coastal Research, 29(5), 7-10. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.
The Natural Ocean Engineering Laboratory (NOEL) of the Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, Italy, is the first ocean engineering laboratory working in the field. A peculiarity of the lab is that a local wind from NNW often generates sea states consisting of pure wind waves that represent a small scale model, in Froude similarity, of ocean storms. Significant wave height ranges between 0.20 m and 0.80 m, with peak periods between 2.0 s and 3.6 s. This local wind is very stable and sometimes stays steady from morning to evening. The tidal amplitude is very small (typically within 0.10 m). The physical structure was built after the successful experience of some initial small-scale field experiments directed by Professor Paolo Boccotti since 1989.
INTRODUCTION
At the Natural Ocean Engineering Laboratory (NOEL) it is possible to operate in the sea with the same techniques used in laboratories with wave tanks. The facility is located on the promenade of Reggio Calabria (Italy), where a wind fromNNW blows many days per week, generating waves with significant wave height within 0.20 m , Hs , 0.80 m and a peak period within 2.0 s , Tp, 3.6 s. The wave spectra are very close to the JONSWAP spectra (Hasselmann et al., 1973), confirming the occurrence of wind wave sea states. At theNOEL, we may work with 1:30 small-scale models of strong Mediterranean storms or with 1:50 scale models of oceanic storms, approximately.
The NOEL is a field laboratory, due to a combination of some exceptional conditions:
(1) the high stability of the local wind, blowing from Messina toward Reggio Calabria for many consecutive days,
(2) the orientation of the coast (see Figure 1), which is protected from the swells that propagate in the Strait of Messina from the south,
(3) the small tide amplitude and the clean water due to the passage twice a day of the Strait current.
The concept of the laboratory began in 1989, when Professor Paolo Boccotti directed the first experiment designed to verify the possibility of operating directly at sea. In the...