Online Wind Tunnel Laboratory
Aziz, E.-S., Esche, S. K., Chassapis, C., Dai, S., Xu, S. & Jia, R.
Proceedings of the 2008 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, June 22 - 25, 2008.
Abstract
Wind tunnels are among the most important design tools used in engineering to study the effects of air moving over or around solid objects such as airplane wings, cars, trains, skyscrapers, bridges, etc.
While introducing wind tunnels to engineering students as part of their laboratory experience contributes to improving their understanding of fundamental fluid mechanics concepts, the significant equipment cost renders the student use of wind tunnels in a traditional hands-on mode infeasible for most educational institutions.
This paper presents the development of an online wind tunnel laboratory, which combines real-time remote access to an actual wind tunnel with a software-based virtual wind tunnel.
The remote experiment system allows the students to explore the air flow patterns around various objects, the orientations of which can be controlled interactively.
This experimental setup provides the students with real-time measurements for pressure, velocity and drag force in conjunction with streamed audio and video.
These remote experiments can be complemented by virtual experiments, in which the shape, size and orientation of the physical objects available in the remote setup can be modified or these objects can be replaced entirely by other objects for which no physical models exist.
This blended laboratory approach combining hardware-based experiments with software simulations expands the set of possible experiments well beyond that which could be performed within the confines of the remote laboratory alone.
Using this powerful approach, the students can gain confidence in the validity of the software simulations through comparisons of the simulation results with data from actual hardware-based experiments.
At the same time, the flexibility of software simulations enables the expansion of the scope of the experiments to parameter ranges and configurations that would not be suitable for the actual wind tunnel.
For example, the virtual experiment allows the students to explore the lift and drag forces acting on different realistic airfoil types oriented at varying angles of attack.