Coastal and Ocean Basin
The Coastal & Ocean Basin wave tank in Ostend has been designed to study the effect of waves and currents on coastal and offshore engineering scale models, as well as the hydrodynamic behaviour of floating and marine renewable energy devices.
The COB is located at the Flanders Maritime Laboratory in Ostend, which was inaugurated in May 2019. This €28 million facility was funded by the Flemish government (Economy, Science & Innovation) and Research Foundation Flanders. It is jointly operated by Ghent University, KU Leuven and Flanders Hydraulics Research. After commissioning and calibration, the COB became fully operational early 2023.
The COB is a 30 m×30 m concrete basin (2.3 m deep, with a 4.5 m pit) for scale-model testing. An L-shaped wave-maker (20×20 m, 86 piston paddles) generates realistic multidirectional seas up to 0.55 m high. Circulation pumps can produce uniform currents up to 0.4 m/s, and opposite absorption beaches ensure stable wave fields. Relative directions of wind and waves can be arbitrarily chosen, making the COB unique in its kind. The basin is also outfitted with wind-generation fans capable of imposing loads up to ≈70 km/h. High-precision instrumentation (including a twin above-/underwater Qualisys motion-capture system) records six-degrees-of-freedom motions of floating models. Other recent enhancements include computerized control of wave/current generation and expanded data acquisition systems. These features make COB ideal for testing coastal defenses and nature-based solutions, offshore and floating structures, and marine-energy devices (e.g. tidal turbines, floating wind turbines, wave-energy converters or floating solar panels).
Since the opening, the COB’s capabilities have been extended via new projects and networks. For instance, COB is now part of Europe’s MARINERG-i offshore-renewables research infrastructure and Belgium’s OWI-Lab platform for offshore wind, linking it with a network of test centers. Furthermore, through an FWO-funded project (2025–28, a modular fan-array wind tunnel will be added, additionally controlling high-speed wind to the COB’s test environment. A parallel project (2024–28) will equip COB with a retractable sand-bed and filtration system. This enables tests of scour, sediment transport, aquaculture cages and nature-based coastal defenses under waves and currents.
