Official News - page 11

REAL LIFE NEWS: A HURRICANE ON WHEELS

by Hazed

Down at the University of Florida, researchers have build a portable hurricane simulator. The mobile wind and rain creator can create a hurricane environment in a laboratory setting which is probably a bit safer and more predictable when you want to do some scientific study on hurricanes.

The unique device is equipped with eight industrial fans powered by four marine diesel engines, and it can reach wind speeds equivalent to those of Hurricane Katrina. It's mounted on a trailer and will be used on vacant homes to test building products, urban landscapes, and anything else that might be affected during a storm.

For several years, the university has been deploying portable towers in the path of land-falling hurricanes to take turbulence measurements. Now they have used this data as a basis for building the simulator, to replicate the real hurricanes they have observed.

For more information, see this article in Technology Review at http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18822/.

Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page