The Underwater Research Laboratory (URL) was established in 1989 and operates within the School or Engineering Science with a mandate to teach the attitudes, approaches, methods, and skills associated with effective and responsible subsea science and engineering.
The Laboratory has 100 square metres of floor space, a test tank, a four-channel coherent laboratory sonar (variable frequency from 10 to 600 kHz), an eight channel coherent field and lab sonar (40 to 400 kHz), a commercial side-scan sonar (330 kHz), an automated beam pattern measurement system, and facilities for making acoustic transducers (vacuum chamber, fume hood, oven).
The URL conducts research in underwater acoustics, sonar (Multi-angle swath bathymetry (MASB) sonars, surveillance sonars), bottom imaging, bottom mapping, bottom classification, bottom reverberation coherency, target detection, underwater acoustic transducer design, construction and evaluation.
Funding for the URL comes from research grants that are associated with projects. Past sponsoring organizations include NSERC, the B.C. Advanced Systems Institute (ASI) and ISER.
Last updated: Aug. 24, 2005