Wind Tunnels
Low speed tunnels
There are two low speed wind tunnels which are regularly used for teaching, undergraduate projects and research activities. Undergraduate students work on topics such as aerodynamics of: airships, wings, road & sport vehicles, flow control for the reduction of drag, jet engine compressor, turbine blades and wind energy, etc.
The cross sectional areas of the low speed wind tunnels ranges from 0.52m x 0.38 m to 1.2 m x 1.2 m with a maximum speed of 40 m/s.
In addition to the wind tunnels themselves these laboratories contain a large variety of flow measurement and visualisation tools including:
- Pressure probes.
- Flow Visualisation tools such as smoke, oil and schlieren system.
- State of art image processing techniques for obtaining qualitative and quantitative information about the flow field.
- Hot-Wire Anemometers for turbulence measurements.
- Advanced optical flow diagnostic tools such as Particle Image Velocitemetry (PIV) and Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV).
- Direct force and moment measurement using single, three and six-component balances.
- Noise measurement devices.
High speed tunnels
The Whitehead Aeronautical Laboratory is equipped with three high speed wind tunnels covering a range of Mach numbers from M=0.3 to three times speed of sound , M=3.0. The high speed facilities are used for undergraduate teaching, laboratory practicals and research projects in aerospace engineering.
These wind tunnels are also being used for research in areas such as:
- Aerodynamics of Jet Engine Turbine Blades at Transonic Speeds
- Control of Shock-Boundary Layer Interactions at Transonic-Supersonic speeds
- Cavity Flows, base drag etc.