Wind tunnel testing can provide significant contributions to the design of marine vehicles in number of obvious and in some cases, surprising areas. While many may think only of the obvious external aerodynamic problems such as wind forces and moments acting upon a vessel, exhaust dispersion, passenger comfort, sails, and interactions with aircraft or internal aerodynamic problems such as optimizing flow within inlet air systems, exhaust systems, and machinery spaces/enclosures, there are numerous applications to hydrodynamic problems as well.

In the end, water and air are just both fluids and if similarity parameters like Reynolds number are modeled correctly and the effects of the free surface or cavitation do not dominate the flow physics, the use of wind tunnels to study hydrodynamic problems can offer high quality results with significant efficiency improvements. Hydrodynamic problems that can be studied in the wind tunnel include propulsion, control surfaces for steering and stabilization, acoustics, underwater vehicles, and sailing vessel keels/rudders.

The staff at DLBA includes aerodynamicists and wind tunnel experts who are experienced in the application of wind tunnel testing to the design of marine vehicles and routinely utilize this important tool as part of a comprehensive design and analysis strategy as appropriate for each project.