Project Success: VT Advanced Towing Carriage

DLBA, in partnership with Edinburgh Designs, recently modernized the towing carriage system for Virginia Tech’s (VT) ship model basin. Trade studies for the carriage upgrade started in 2019, and in the spring of 2022 term VT students used the new carriage for lab experiments. DLBA’s team is excited to bring this project to a successful completion!

This lab equipment upgrade is a big leap forward for VT’s academic and research capabilities. The pre-existing carriage was designed and built by Kempf & Remmers of Hamburg, Germany in 1963. It was driven by a single 400VDC drive motor powered by an onboard 3-phase motor generator, and the operator’s panel featured vacuum tube control circuits. The old carriage achieved a top speed of 3 m/s with a max acceleration of 0.7 m/s^2.