CFD Simulation and Experimental Validation of a New Closed Circuit Wind/Water Tunnel Design

Abstract

A new closed-circuit wind/water tunnel to support flow visualization research was designed and constructed at The University of Aberdeen. Review of existing closed-circuit tunnel designs revealed that they are large, expensive, difficult to set up and maintain, and typically employ a single working fluid. Key objectives of the work reported here were to reduce the overall cost and size of the tunnel, facilitate the use of alternative working fluids (air or water), and provide high quality flow within the test section. Conventional design methods were used initially, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was then employed to simulate the flow within critical sections of the tunnel. The results from CFD played a decisive role in identifying the modifications needed to achieve the compact, cost-effective tunnel design eventually built and tested. Flow quality within the test section was established using measured velocity profiles, and these are also presented.

CFD and Experimental Study on the Effect of Progressive Heating on Fluid Flow inside a Thermal Wind Tunnel

“…Gordon and Imbabi [5] carried out a CFD study to analyze the flow within critical sections of a closed-loop wind tunnel facility developed at the University of Aberdeen. The aim of the work involved reducing the overall cost and size of the wind tunnel in order to facilitate the use of different working fluids and at the same time alongside maintain the high quality of the flow in the test section.…”

“…The common objective for most wind tunnels is to obtain a flow in the test section that is a parallel steady flow with uniform speed throughout the test section [1][2][3] The fundamental principles used to model low-speed aerodynamic flows include mass conservation, force and motion relating to Newton's Second Law and energy exchanges governed by the First Law of Thermodynamics. In considering low-speed flows, the assumption of incompressible flow is often adopted to determine the correlation with respect to full-scale structural dynamic characteristics [4][5][6][7]. To account for accurate simulation procedures, viable numerical codes have been developed and applied to establish mathematical models involving flow and turbulence [8].…”

A validated design methodology for a closed-loop subsonic wind tunnel

“…Gordon and Imbabi [9] used CFD to simulate the flow within critical sections of the closed-loop wind tunnel at the University of Aberdeen. The study aimed to reduce the overall cost and size of the wind tunnel, facilitate the use of alternative working fluids and at the same time maintain the high quality of the flow in the test section.…”

Design and Build a Water Channel for a Fluid Dynamics Lab

“…In order to achieve laminar flow in the test section, a flow distributer, flow straighteners, and contraction section was used based on the wind tunnel designs in previous literature [5][6][7][8] . The distributor is located at the bottom of the inlet tank which forces the flow to spread out over a series of holes.…”

“…The water channel for this study was designed based on the wind tunnels because there exists a significant body of knowledge describing the topology of the flow field and measurements of wind tunnels. Complementary information about wind tunnels, water channels, and other experimental facilities can be found in recommended literature [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] . The focus of this paper is on describing the design and construction of the circulating water channel facility at Penn State Berks and especially, the educational aspects of this project.…”