#49: Coastal Physical Modeling: Validating for Resilience and Defense

About this episode

The episode discusses ERDC's coastal physical modeling capabilities and their importance in engineering resilient coastal defenses.

Even in the age of supercomputing, engineers still demand tangible models to fully understand the complex interaction between coastal infrastructure and dynamic ocean forces. ERDC has nearly a century of expertise in building scaled representations of real-world systems and testing them to evaluate civil works and military project designs. We discuss ERDC’s coastal physical modeling capabilities with Dr. Duncan Bryant, a senior research hydraulic engineer with ERDC’s Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory. Topics include the need for physical modeling and its role alongside other coastal engineering tools (4:05), how ERDC improves Joint Force readiness by testing ship-to-shore logistics (8:24) and how models help engineers design better coastal defenses for improved resilience (12:00). We also discuss how ERDC’s facilities (16:20), capabilities (23:26) and master craftsmen (21:28) enable this work; how it is collaborating with industry and academia (26:50); and how ERDC is working to solve tomorrow’s coastal challenges (28:25). Watch a video of this podcast on our website at www.PowerofERDCPodcast.org/49-coastal-physical-modeling_video . You can also see additional resources at…

People in this episode

Guest: Dr. Duncan Bryant

Topics covered

• coastal engineering
• physical modeling
• resilience
• defense
• military logistics
• collaboration

Keywords

• coastal infrastructure
• dynamic ocean forces
• civil works
• military project designs
• Joint Force readiness
• ship-to-shore logistics
• coastal challenges

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory

Places: coastal, ocean

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