Facilities

The Manly Hydraulics Laboratory was established in 1944 to provide specialist services in the area of water, coastal and environmental solutions.

Working Space

Covered experimental space - 2230 sq m
Open air experimental space - 3530 sq m

Major Hydraulic Facilities

30m x 1.0m x 1.8m Wave flume with adjustable floor and random wave generator
11m x 0.6m x 0.8m Tilting flume with glass panels
30m x 20m x 1m Wave basin with random multidirectional wave generator
NATA accredited urban water meter testing rig
NATA accredited open channel and closed conduit non-urban water meter pattern approval test rig
Re-circulated flow rig with flows up to 1500 l/s and 60m head
Linay and Hydraulic Structures
Water quality laboratory
Wave rider buoy callibration rig

Know The Flow

The facility was established with a grant from the federal Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities as part of the National Water Initiative. The facility has been designed to carry out pattern approval testing of irrigation water meters as described in the National Measurement Institute’s documents NMI M 10-2 and NMI M 11-2. Both open channel and closed conduit meters can be tested at flows up to over 129ML/day and up to heads of 60m. The new facility replaces an earlier irrigation testing facility developed at MHL in 1998 as part of the Know-the-Flow project which MHL has used to test irrigation flow meters in flow conditions as near as possible to those in the field. The facility has been constructed to undertake testing as defined by AS 3565.4 - 2007 "Meters for Water Supply - Part 4: in-service Compliance testing". MHL has recently developed a test facility for displacement water meters with 20 - 40 mm diameters.

Water authorities are required to test a percentage of their household water meters each year to ensure accuracy. This is tied to the trade measurement legislation.

Testing and reporting can be undertaken on individual meters or on a family of meters as defined in AS 3565.4.

This facility has been accredited by the National Association of Testing Authorities, Australia (NATA) – Accreditation No. 17156.

Flow Rig

The rig, which utilises water from Manly Dam, re-circulated at all flow rates other than extremely low flow rates, allows testing of complete installations over a range of conditions. Complete flow measurement installations, including the common arrangement where the flow meter is installed in a short pipe from an open supply channel, can be tested, as well as flow meters in closed conduits. Testing can include evaluation of the accuracy of installations and their sensitivity to the various adverse flow conditions that occur in the field and head loss measurements over a range of flows.

Other Site Facilities

Computer centre with remote sensing, GIS and database capabilities
Electronics workshop for the testing, construction and repair of hydrodynamic instrumentation
Mechanical workshop for the construction of experimental facilities
Clean water flows up 1.13cu m/s from Manly Dam (a 9,000,000 cu m reservoir)
Laboratory instrumentation for measuring most hydraulic parameters
Field instrumentation to measure hydrodynamic and ocean processes

Flow Testing	Flow Testing
Urban Water Meter Test Rig	2D Wave Flume
Physical Models	Physical Models
Wave Basin	Wave Basin
Dam Spillway Model	Flow Monitoring
Water Quality Monitoring	Water Quality Monitoring