Jules Verne 2.0, renewal of a large wind tunnel facility

Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering, 2010

Trans Stellar Journals, 2021

The increase in wind energy over the last decade has depicted a significant development in onshore and offshore wind turbine designs. Wind turbine designs are highly dependent on aerodynamic properties of lift and drag. There is normally an iterative process consisting of numerical design, prototype construction, testing and optimisation, calibration of computational flow models on the path to commercialisation. Theoretical turbine models are usually validated or optimised by the assessment of scaled models tested in a wind tunnel. The aim of this paper was to design and manufacture a small-scale low-speed wind tunnel for the testing and optimisation of novel wind turbines. An open circuit design was chosen instead of a closed system to save space. The wind tunnel was to achieve maximum flow speeds of 9m/s in alignment to average wind speeds located off the South African coastline as investigated in previous studies. The conditions within the testing area of the design were required to maintain steady flow conditions. A hot wire wind anemometer was used to measure the flow speeds at different points of the wind tunnel for the validation of the design. The results showed that each section of the wind tunnel complied to the design conditions with minimum error. The turbulence intensity was also investigated and depicted across the circuit. The results have shown that the design philosophy which was chosen was sound and the system may be pursued for the testing of novel scaled wind turbines and scaled aerodynamic profiles for validation and optimisation purposes.

Jurnal Teknologi, 2016

This manuscript contains the development stages of a multipurpose wind tunnel built at the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The fully automated wind tunnel is named Pangkor after an island in Perak, Malaysia. The development of the wind tunnel consists of three stages namely the design, fabrication and testing & commissioning. The computational fluids dynamic (CFD) approach was employed to ascertain the main geometries to optimize space utilization. Calculations are made based on typical wind tunnel design guidelines. Pitot tubes-pressure transducer, hotwire anemometry, temperature, room humidity and barometric sensors were used to verify actual flow of our construction. A traverse installed at the wind tunnel is capable of a two dimensional movements. The 15 kW axial fan used is especially selected because of space limitation. A variable frequency drive (VFD) connected to fan's motor allows velocity control from a computer. All devices are connected a computer with one single controlling software; Scilab-ensuring ease of operation. The project shows that, with a limited budget, a wind tunnel with full functionalities could be constructed.

Mathematical Modelling in Civil Engineering

Atmospheric Boundary layer wind tunnels (ABLWT) dedicated to building safety and comfort have been operated by CSTB in Nantes since 1971. Because ABLWT only deal with reduced scale models of real structures, the necessity of a larger wind tunnel, the Jules Verne Climatic wind tunnel (CWT), able to reproduce extreme wind loads on real scale structures arose in the years 80. Hence, it became a major European facility operating for improvement of the safety, quality and environmental impact of buildings and civil engineering works as well as products from industrial fields (transportation, energy…) with respect to strong winds and other climatic hazards. Both wind tunnel types, the ABLWT and the CWT are complementary and used for studying the effect of wind on the same structures at two different scales, when the effect of wind scaling is important. During the 2018 year, several modifications were made to the CWT facility. The atmospheric test section of the existing facility was elong...

Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering, 2017

Low Reynolds numbers (Re < 2.2 × 10 5) wind tunnel tests are conducted and the results are presented here. Based on the wind tunnel specifications and the focus on small-scale platforms, 2-D and 3-D wind tunnel tests are conducted based on the assumption that most of the platforms at that scale operate at the same Reynolds numbers. The platform, which is described in Sect. 9.1, is chosen because of the fact that the average speed that operates is the speed that the wind tunnel wing models are tested. The experimental results of all CCWs are presented, compared, and discussed. The effect of blowing on lift and drag coefficients is presented along with the improved lift-to-drag ratios. Lift augmentation ratio results are shown and a comparison between all Coandȃ surfaces tested show that CC works at all configurations and with upper slot blowing, lift enhancement is achieved. The qualified wing configuration (NACA 0015 CCW) is tested (2-D wind tunnel test) with two dual radius flap configurations and the results are presented next. Before moving on to the analysis of the results, it is important to understand the level of uncertainty of the measurements and the parameters that may not be controllable during a wind tunnel test. A block diagram representation of a wind tunnel experiment is shown in Fig. 8.1. The inputs can be parameters that define the experiment as: angle of attack of the wing, roll, pitch, yaw, etc. and in general the initial conditions that are set. Elements that are controlled and defined by the researcher are the: model size, tunnel size, model material, and time of the experiment. The elements of the output vector are the parameters that need to be investigated and are defined by the experiment and are known a-priori. Those elements can be forces, moments components as indicated by the balance, pressure readings, video image, or smoke visualization methods, etc. At last, uncontrollable factors include variables

The existing UPM low speed wind tunnel was usually occupied by students, who carried out their final year projects or postgraduate researches, so that there was hardly free time slot for any additional testing work. Due to this reason, a new wind tunnel project has been started recently. Some basic specifications of the new tunnel have been pre-selected before the project was started, which comprised the following design decisions: a tunnel speed of 50 m/s, a test section area of 1´1 m2, and a closed circuit tunnel type. It wouldn’t be difficult to perceive that this pre-selection was made based on some of the trade-off results among the project’s options and constraints. This paper is aimed to present a simple analysis on the design of the new tunnel, focusing only on its basic geometries. Some design decisions that have been made related to its basic geometries are analyzed and reported in this paper. This analysis may be considered as a design verification of the new tunnel or even perhaps be regarded as scientific justification for its existence

Ingeniería

Context: Wind tunnels are essential devices in the study of flow properties through objects and scaled prototypes. This work presents a numerical study to characterize an existing wind tunnel, proposing modifications with the aim to improve the quality of the flow in the test chamber. Method: Experimental measurements of the inlet velocity and pressure distribution of a wind tunnel are nperformed. These empirical values are used as parameters to define boundary conditions in simulations. The Finite Element Method (FEM) at low speeds is implemented to determine the stream function by using a standard Galerkin method. Polynomial interpolations are employed to modify the contraction section design, and numerical simulations are performed in order to compare the numerical results of the flow for the existing and the modified wind tunnels. Results: Experimental measurements of the flow at the wind tunnel entrance are presented. The velocity field and distribution of thermodynamic variabl...

International Journal of Environmental Science & Technology, 2009

A new multipurpose wind tunnel with adjustable test section designed in the science and research branch of Islamic Azad University site could be used either as the environmental, subsonic or climatic wind tunnels. For this purpose, a new design approach was adopted in which through the adjustment of the wind tunnel cycle, i.e. the nozzle of test section,it could be utilized as any of the three wind tunnels. A design used for environmental wind tunnels and other contraction which was adjusted by 50 % through changes in the polynomial contraction for other applications. As a result, the best fitted profile for the environmental wind tunnels contraction was selected by contraction best fit program. Consequently, the flow properties and flow separation of contractions were analyzed by the computational fluid dynamics model in a computer software. This method is also suitable for existing low speed wind tunnels with special applications.

Aerodynamics research and model testing are mostly done on large wind tunnels for industrial research. This is associated with complexities and large expenses. For simple aerodynamic experiments for demonstration purpose it would be uneconomical to buy or lease such wind tunnels. A wind tunnel operates on the principle of artificially producing airflow past a stationary body to simulate the actual conditions acting on the model. This helps in obtaining the aerodynamic forces and pressure distribution measurements as well as investigate the fluid flow behavior. A few years ago, only a few institutions of learning were in possession of funds adequate to construct and operate viable tunnels capable of being utilized in learning activities. Fortunate enough, it is during this period that recorded exponential increase in the computing capabilities and growth of programming languages necessary to program foundational mathematics. On the other hand, as this trend increased, the cost of developing such systems decreased equally fast with each development. With the continuation of these trends it became economical to study fluid flow, bringing forth the advent of computational fluid dynamics. Continued advancement in computing has resulted in equally advanced and accurate evaluation of flow regimes using CFD software. Nonetheless, even with modern day computers a wind tunnel is a vital engineering research tool. Therefore, Group A Team designed a simple wind tunnel that could be used by students, and their instructors, of the Technical University of Kenya to do experimental demonstrations at a much lower cost both considering its construction and desired operations. The design was made convenient for learners and the institution in terms of ease of use, operating cost and model setting for experiments.