The Hydrodynamic Monitoring Facility For Ship-generated Disturbances

Many of the hydrodynamic problems presently of interest in remote sensing have not traditionally been investigated by ship hydrodynamicists. The purpose of the University of Michigan Is Program in Ship Hydrodynami cs (PSH) is to bring together an interdisciplinar y research team to investigate selected aspects of these non-tradi tional problems. Because the intent of the research is to study the fundamental properties of the fluid flow at a free surface, the results also have direct application to the more traditional areas of remote sensing of the sea surface. Much is still unknown and there is a lack of consensus concerning the physics of the remote sensing of ship wakes by airborne and spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). Therefore, the major goal of this program has been to make a significant advance in fundamental hydrodynamic experimental measurements in the towing tank enviro$ent. New, extremely accurate instrumentation has been developed to measure the surface tangential velocities, surface displacements, and surface slopes of the water surface behind a ship model. be correlated with simultaneous radar scatterometer measurements (provilded