Abstract
HYDBATJLIC laboratories are in use for a variety of purposes, including the training of engineers, tests of turbines and pumps, model experiments on ships and seaplane floats and for research on river, reclamation and harbour problems. In the Engineer of April 3, Dr. F. V. A. E. Engel reviews some of the aspects in the design of such laboratories and gives a detailed description of the new hydraulic laboratory at the Park Royal works of Messrs. Electroflo Meters Co. Ltd., erected for the routine work of testing and calibrating meters and for the development and improvement of fluid flow measuring devices. A factor of importance in the design of a meter test plant, he says, is the maintenance of a constant head in the test line. In the plant at the Park Royal works, water is drawn from a sump by two electrically driven centrifugal pumps and delivered to an overhead tank 65 feet above the ground floor. The water then flows through the test line, where Venturi tubes and orifice plates may be installed in a straight pipe 60 ft. long. From the test line the water passes into a settling tank and two measuring tanks, and so back to the sump. For timing the tests an interesting device has been adopted which automatically operates the stop watch. When the flow of water entering one measuring tank is switched over to the other, the water jet from the change-over valve interrupts a beam of light impinging on a photo-electric cell, and by means of a thermionic amplifier and relay the stop watch is controlled. In the new laboratory, investigations are in progress on a model of a large Venturi flume recently constructed at the West Middlesex sewerage works at Mogden.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
A New Hydraulic Laboratory. Nature 137, 651 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137651b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137651b0