Centre for immersive wave experimentation

The “Centre for Immersive Wave Experimentation” (CIWE), located at “Innovation Park Zürich,” spans 200 m² and was designed to conduct ground-breaking research in the fields of acoustic and elastic wave propagation. In CIWE, we pioneer a novel approach to wave experimentation using immersive boundary conditions, seamlessly integrating the physical laboratory and a desired numerical domain. A cornerstone of CIWE is an advanced system of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), allowing the simultaneous acquisition and driving of 800 input and 800 output channels. This enables real-time interaction between a physical domain (e.g., the 40 m3 water pool or the 2.25 m2 2-D waveguide in CIWE) and arbitrary virtual domains. Recent pioneering experiments in CIWE have demonstrated cloning and cloaking of acoustic scattering objects. Elastic wave experiments benefit from a robotized 3-D laser Doppler vibrometer providing high-resolution velocity vector measurements. The ability to conduct non-contact measurements facilitates research in the areas of metamaterials and small-scale modelling in real-world proxies like sand and clay. Here, such measurements provide ground truth, verifying and complimenting numerical simulations. Furthermore, CIWE also facilitates innovation in the area of non-destructive testing, developing ultrasound full-waveform inversion techniques for precise structural health monitoring of laminated composites.