UNCW Coastal Engineering Building
About the Project
SGA|NW is making waves at the University of North Carolina Wilmington with the design for the 14,225 sf Coastal Engineering Building. A 24-meter wave flume will be a key feature of the 2,400 sf Wave Lab jump starting the new Coastal Engineering degree program. Ryan Mieras Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Coastal Engineering, stated “The new wave lab research facility will enable coastal and ocean engineering studies of real-world problems involving waves and/or the transport of sand, such as the naturally occurring beach erosion-recovery cycles on barrier islands. Other potential areas of research to be enabled by the wave lab include wave-structure interaction (e.g., hurricane storm surge or tsunami impact on coastal infrastructure), testing novel coastal protection strategies, evaluation of wave energy converter devices, and development of precision oceanographic instrumentation.”