Summer 2010: work begins on creating the FOBS instrument. The mechanical and electronic components will be made in-house. The optical components will be made by DB in collaboration with Dr Ronald Neal, using some of the clean room facilities in the Wolfson Nanomagnetics Laboratory.
November 2010: turbulence tank near completion and is moved to its home in the Energy Laboratory (W8), Brunel Laboratories, UoP main campus.
December 2010: DB presents at the annual Marine Institute conference with a paper entitled "New Formulae for the Mobilization of Graded Sediment".
2011
January 2011: DB and DC complete a paper entitled "Apparent Critical Shear Stress of Graded Sediment in Steady Flows" and submit to Water Resources Research.
January 2011: DB and DC complete the LANTRA sit-astride ATV qualification (for beach survey work in May).
January 2011: the shaking grid turbulence tank with a fully programmable actuator which permits generation of custom designed turbulence fields has been constructed.
February 2011: Aline Pieterse from Utrecht University will be spending a summer internship with us, starting 1 April, helping us carry out our field and laboratory measurements.
March 2011. The FOBS sensor is 85% complete and all indications are that it will be available for laboratory use on 1 April 2011 and for use in planned field measurements from 1-21 May 2011.
April 2011 DC will attend the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2011 in Vienna to present a paper entitled "Formula for Motion Threshold per Grain Size for Graded Sediments in Steady Flows".
June 2011: We will be joined at Praa Sands in May 2011 by Dr David Rubin of the USGS, Santa Cruz. Dave will be carrying out sedimentological work on the intertidal beachface, interested in structures preserved during high-energy sheet flow conditions. He'll also be attempting to take high resolution images of the seabed using a novel wave-powered hydraulic bed-sediment video microscope.