The British Hydromechanics Research Association is a former government research association that supplies consulting engineering over

fluid dynamics In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids— liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) an ...

History

It was formed on 20 September 1947 in Essex, under the

Companies Act 1929 The Companies Act 1929 (19 & 20 Geo.5 c.23) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which regulated UK company law. Its descendant is the Companies Act 2006. Provisions Forms made under the 1929 Act introduced the term "Companies Cou ...

It had moved to Bedfordshire by the 1960s. In the 1970s it was known as BHRA Fluid Engineering. Next door was the National Centre for Materials Handling, set up by the

Ministry of Technology The Ministry of Technology was a department of the government of the United Kingdom, sometimes abbreviated as "MinTech". The Ministry of Technology was established by the incoming government of Harold Wilson in October 1964 as part of Wilson's am ...

(MinTech), later known as the National Materials Handling Centre. On 16 October 1989 it became a private consultancy.

Fluid engineering

The BHRA conducted most of the research for the

aerodynamics Aerodynamics, from grc, ἀήρ ''aero'' (air) + grc, δυναμική (dynamics), is the study of the motion of air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dyn ...

of British power station infrastructure in the 1960s, such as

cooling tower A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and ...

s. In 1966 it designed an early Thames flood barrier.

Computational fluid dynamics

It developed early CFD software.

Visits

On Tuesday 21 June 1966, the new Bedfordshire laboratories were opened by

Duke of Edinburgh Duke of Edinburgh, named after the city of Edinburgh in Scotland, was a substantive title that has been created three times since 1726 for members of the British royal family. It does not include any territorial landholdings and does not produc ...

.''Times'' Saturday 18 June 1966, page 15

Structure

The organisation,

Framatome Framatome () is a French nuclear reactor business. It is owned by Électricité de France (EDF) (75.5%), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (19.5%), and Assystem (5%). The company first formed in 1958 to license Westinghouse's pressurized water reacto ...

BHR, is now in

Cranfield Cranfield is a village and civil parish in the west of Bedfordshire, England, situated between Bedford and Milton Keynes. It had a population of 4,909 in 2001. increasing to 5,369 at the 2011 Census. The parish is in Central Bedfordshire uni ...

in west

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council wa ...

, near the M1.

References

{{reflist

External links

BHR Group
1947 establishments in the United Kingdom British research associations Central Bedfordshire District Computational fluid dynamics Engineering research institutes Hydraulic engineering organizations Hydraulic laboratories Research institutes established in 1947 Science and technology in Bedfordshire Science and technology in Essex Wind tunnels