The Hydraulic Engineering Laboratory at the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Patras was founded in 1980. Initially, its title was “Laboratory of Hydraulic Works”. It was renamed to its present name in 1991. Professor Emeritus C. Hadjitheodorou was the Director from 1980 until 2006, and Professor Emeritus A.C. Demetracopoulos from 2006 until 2020. Since 2020, Director of the Laboratory is Professor Athanassios A. Dimas.

The aim of the Hydraulic Engineering Laboratory is to support teaching, advance research and provide services related to hydraulic engineering, hydrologic engineering, coastal engineering, offshore engineering, flow of surface, ground and sea waters, water resources management, as well as associated technical works.

The personnel of the Laboratory comprise three Faculty members, one Technical Laboratory member and one Administrative Staff member.

The Laboratory consists of the primary laboratory space with an area of approximately 1000 m², and a secondary space of approximately 100 m². The main facilities in the primary space are the Long Flume, the Intermediate Flume, the Wave Basin and the Network of Constant-Head Conduits which lead to the corresponding space for operation of hydraulic models. The main facilities in the secondary space are the Small Flume and the Hydraulic Benches with assorted attachments which allow performance of various small scale experiments. There exists the necessary equipment for measurement of characteristic parameters in laboratory experiments as well as in field work. In addition, there exists a computer lab which consists of about 25 serial computers and a computer cluster with 96 nodes.