scholarly journals Wind tunnel correction for a circular open jet tunnel with a reflexion plate

It is advantageous from many points of view to make test models as large as possible. One method of doing this is to measure the characteristics of half the model in existing wind tunnels. One half of the aerofoil is mounted horizontally on a vertical reflexion plate and the plate is placed in a suitable position in an open jet which, in the undisturbed state, is of circular section. The contour of the jet is distorted, especially with models of large semi-span, but this distortion is neglected in the analysis. The correcting factor associated with ‘uniform’ distribution of lift is worked out exactly and that associated with ‘elliptic’ distribution approximately. The effect of the induced downwash on the distribution of lift is ignored. The results are given in suitable tables and figures. Throughout the working range of normal experiments the correcting factor is of the same order of magnitude as that obtaining when a full model is tested in a jet of circular section.

The lift and drag experienced by an aerofoil in a wind tunnel differ from the lift and drag experienced by the same aerofoil under free air conditions. These differences, which are the induced effects due to the walls of the enclosure, can be determined by the aid of general considerations laid down by Prandtl. In a closed tunnel, that is, a tunnel with rigid walls, the necessary boundary condition is that the velocity normal to the walls shall be zero. In an open tunnel, or free jet, the condition is that the pressure is constant over the boundary. Assuming that trailing vortices spring from the aerofoil and extend downstream without distortion, Prandtl has shown that the problem can be converted into one dealing with the flow in a section of the wake far behind the aerofoil, the necessary boundary condition being that the velocity potential is constant over the trace of the open tunnel. Prandtl ( loc. cit .) himself has investigated the interference experienced by an aerofoil in a tunnel of circular section for an elliptic distribution of lift across the span. Glauert, to whom a considerable extension of the theory is due, found approximate values of the induced drag in a rectangular tunnel when the span of the aerofoil is indefinitely small. Terazawa modified Glauert’s method and obtained the exact solution for an aerofoil with uniform distribution of circulation in a rectangular channel. Rosenhead obtained exact results for uniform and elliptic distributions both in circular and rectangular tunnels. More recently, in connection with the building of a wind tunnel of elliptic section, Glauert was led to reconsider the general problem of wind tunnel interference, and his conclusions are embodied in three valuable papers. In the first of these he pointed out that the problem discussed by previous investigators is that in which the lift distribution is prescribed to be the same as that in free air, and the aerofoil is twisted in the tunnel to a position in which this distribution is maintained. In general, if the aerofoil is not twisted in this way, there is a change in the distribution of circulation. If this change is taken into account, Glauert has shown for a tunnel of circular section “that the formulæ derived from the assumption of elliptic distribution of lift are sufficiently accurate for all conventional shapes of aerofoil, but that those derived from the assumption of a uniform distribution over-estimate the effect of increasing span of the aerofoil.”


2014 ◽  
Vol 607 ◽  
pp. 694-699
Author(s):  
H. Yu ◽  
Noor A. Ahmed ◽  
T.G. Flynn

Appropriate selection of methods of manufacture and materials of test models are essential components physical experimentations using wind tunnels. The present paper is written with a view to highlight some of the aspects that need careful considerations in formulating cost-effective test program and gathering of accurate test data for successful outcome of such wind tunnel experiments.


1991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Deakin

During the development of new stability regulations for the U.K. Department of Transport, doubt was cast over many of the assumptions made when assessing the stability of sailing vessels. In order to investigate the traditional methods a programme of work was undertaken including wind tunnel tests and full scale data acquisition. The work resulted in a much improved understanding of the behaviour of sailing vessels and indeed indicated that the conventional methods of stability assessment are invalid, the rules now applied in the U.K. being very different to those in use elsewhere. The paper concentrates on the model test techniques which were developed specifically for this project but which will have implications to other vessel types. The tests were of two kinds: measurement of the wind forces and moments on a sailing vessel; and investigation of the response of sailing vessels to gusts of wind. For the force and moment measurements models were mounted in a tank of water on a six component balance and tested in a large boundary layer wind tunnel. Previous tests in wind tunnels have always concentrated on performance and the heeling moments have not normally been measured correctly. As the measurements of heeling moment at a range of heel angles was of prime importance a new balance and mounting system was developed which enabled the above water part of the vessel to be modelled correctly, the underwater part to be unaffected by the wind, and the interface to be correctly represented without interference. Various effects were investigated including rig type, sheeting, heading, heel angle and wind gradient. The gust response tests were conducted with Froude scaled models floating in a pond set in the wind tunnel floor. A mechanism was installed in the tunnel which enabled gusts of various characteristics to be generated, and the roll response of the models was measured with a gyroscope. These tests provided information on the effects of inertia, damping, rolling and the characteristics of the gust. Sample results are presented to illustrate the uses to which these techniques have been put.


1935 ◽  
Vol 39 (295) ◽  
pp. 619-632
Author(s):  
TH. Von karman ◽  
Clark B. Millikan

The problem of the maximum lift of airfoils has concerned the authors greatly since there were first discovered in the spring of 1932 serious discrepancies in this characteristic between results obtained in the wind tunnel of the Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) and those reported from certain other wind tunnels. An elaborate experimental investigation by the junior author and A. L. Klein indicated that the value of CLmax for a given airfoil was strongly affected both by Reynolds number and by the degree of turbulence in the tunnel wind stream.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
pp. 1274-1280
Author(s):  
Alfred Gift Mwachugha ◽  
Jean Byiringiro ◽  
Harrison Ngetha ◽  
Thomas Carolus ◽  
Kathrin Stahl

A Prandtl probe is one of the standard instruments used for flow characterization in wind tunnel facilities. The convectional fabrication method of this instrument requires skilled artisanship, precision drilling, lathing and soldering of its several parts. This reflects into high costs of production in turn making wind energy studies expensive. With the adoption of additive manufacturing, the tooling costs, skills required and design to manufacture constraints can be addressed. This research presents a Prandtl probe that was designed using NX™ software, fabricated by desktop stereolithography additive manufacturing platform and validated in a wind tunnel for velocity range of 0 m/s to 51 m/s. This research attested the option of fabricating relatively cheap functional Prandtl probe with desktop stereolithography technology which can be used for accurate determination of flow quality in wind tunnels experiments. This provides various learning and research institution in developing countries that have already invested in additive desktop manufacturing technology certainty and a cheaper option to fabricate wind research instruments for use at their laboratories. Moreover, fabrication and validation of a 5-hole Prandtl probe can also be examined.


2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederik C. Gerhardt ◽  
David Le Pelley ◽  
Richard G. J. Flay ◽  
Peter Richards

In recent years a number of Dynamic Velocity Prediction Programs (DVPPs), which allow studying the behaviour of a yacht while tacking, have been developed. The aerodynamic models used in DVPPs usually suffer from a lack of available data on the behaviour of the sail forces at very low apparent wind angles where the sails are flogging. In this paper measured aerodynamic force and moment coefficients for apparent wind angles between 0° and 30° are presented. Tests were carried out in the University of Auckland’s Twisted Flow Wind Tunnel in a quasi-steady manner for stepwise changes of the apparent wind angle. Test results for different tacking scenarios (genoa flogging or backed) are presented and discussed and it is found that a backed headsail does not necessarily produce more drag than a flogging headsail but increases the beneficial yawing moment significantly. The quasisteady approach used in the wind tunnel tests does not account for unsteady effects like the aerodynamic inertia in roll due to the “added mass” of the sails. In the second part of paper the added mass moment of inertia of a mainsail is estimated by “strip theory” and found to be significant. Using expressions from the literature the order of magnitude of three-dimensional effects neglected in strip theory is then assessed. To further quantify the added inertia experiments with a mainsail model were carried out. Results from those tests are presented at the end of the paper and indicate that the added inertia is about 76 % of what strip theory predicts.


Author(s):  
Monty Bruckman II ◽  
Lance W Traub

Programs in mechanical and aeronautical engineering commonly include courses in compressible fluid flow. As such, learning can be greatly enhanced if theory is taught in conjunction with hands on experimentation. While supersonic wind tunnels are not uncommon at many universities, such facilities are generally of the blow down configuration. Consequently, run time is very short and ear protection is required during operation, potentially hindering instruction. Furthermore, blow down configurations are typically expensive and large. This article presents the design and manufacture of a continuous, indraft, miniature supersonic wind tunnel. The tunnel was designed for a nominal test section Mach number of 2; validation indicated a Mach number of 1.96 was achieved. Vacuum was provided by a regenerative blower. The facility is portable and quiet; measurements indicated that the sound level around the tunnel when operational was less than 81 dB (compared to 119dB generated by the department’s blow down supersonic wind tunnel).


2014 ◽  
Vol 986-987 ◽  
pp. 1629-1633
Author(s):  
Zheng Yu Zhang ◽  
Xu Hui Huang ◽  
Jiang Yin ◽  
Han Xuan Lai

Videogrammetric measurement is a research focus for the organizations of wind tunnel test because of its no special requirements on the test model, its key techniques for the vibration environment of the high speed wind tunnel are introduced by this paper, such as the solution of exterior parameters with big-angle large overlap, the algorithm of image processing for extracting marked point, the method of camera calibration and wave-front distortion field measurement. The great requirements and application prospects of videogrammetry in wind tunnel fine testing have been demonstrated by several practice experiments, including to measure test model’s angle of attack, dynamic deformations and wave-front distortion field in high speed wind tunnels whose test section size is 2 meters.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1915
Author(s):  
Bingzheng Dou ◽  
Zhanpei Yang ◽  
Michele Guala ◽  
Timing Qu ◽  
Liping Lei ◽  
...  

The wake of upstream wind turbine is known to affect the operation of downstream turbines and the overall efficiency of the wind farm. Wind tunnel experiments provide relevant information for understanding and modeling the wake and its dependency on the turbine operating conditions. There are always two main driving modes to operate turbines in a wake experiment: (1) the turbine rotor is driven and controlled by a motor, defined active driving mode; (2) the rotor is driven by the incoming wind and subject to a drag torque, defined passive driving mode. The effect of the varying driving mode on the turbine wake is explored in this study. The mean wake velocities, turbulence intensities, skewness and kurtosis of the velocity time-series estimated from hot-wire anemometry data, were obtained at various downstream locations, in a uniform incoming flow wind tunnel and in an atmospheric boundary layer wind tunnel. The results show that there is not a significant difference in the mean wake velocity between these two driving modes. An acceptable agreement is observed in the comparison of wake turbulence intensity and higher-order statistics in the two wind tunnels.


The effect of the walls of the enclosure on the measured values of the lift and drag experienced by an aerofoil is quite appreciable and it has been known for a considerable time that correction must be applied to wind tunnel result before they can be applied to free air conditions. Prandtl* investigated the effect on an aerofoil in a free jet or circular tube both in the case where there is a uniform lift distribution, and in the case where there is an elliptic distribution of circulation. The elliptic distribution is of importance because it gives the minimum drag for a given lift. Glauert by means of an approximate method found the induced drag and lift in a rectangular channel when there is a uniform distribution of lift. Terazawa modified Glauert’s method and obtained the exact solution for an aerofoil with uniform distribution of circulation in a rectangular channel. It is The object of this note to extend these results and to obtain the induces drag and lift in a rectangular channel when there is an elliptic distribution of lift. In addition, the discussion of Prandtl is briefly gone through because Prandtl’s results are usually given as the first few terms of an infinite series, and it has not been noticed that the result can be obtained exactly. Glauert’s work on the effect of plane barries is briefly re-examined because, in his analysis, approximate expression were summed over an infinite series of points, and at first glance it appeared that this would introduce some error of the same order as the result. In this note the summation is carried out rigorously and the approximations to the actual values. The small divergences from Glauert’s result obtained by Terazawa in two numerical cases are, in effect, the result of a slightly more accurate approximation. From the practical point of view the results of this paper add little to what is known already, for the major corrections are given by the results of the approximate methods, but this note should fill in some small gaps in the theory of wind tunnel interference.


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