seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from Malaysia
seen from Germany
seen from Indonesia
seen from Maldives
seen from Australia
seen from Maldives
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Indonesia
seen from Singapore
seen from Singapore
seen from Switzerland
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from India
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Indonesia
UNSW Sydney PhD Candidate Kyle Forster was officially awarded his doctorate - congratulations Kyle! His thesis, "The Interactions of Streamwise Co-rotating and Counter-rotating Vortices" was successfully defended and the work resulted in several top quality publications currently coming through in Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physics of Fluids, and more. Kyle is taking up a job at Mercedes AMG F1 in England, becoming the 4th FLIP student to end up in Formula One. Well done Kyle!
Particle Image Velocimetry...ing.
UNSW Australia PhD candidate Kyle Forster has been characterizing the wind tunnel at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia - why Macquarie? Former F1 aerodynamicist Dr. Sammy Diasinos is Kyle’s co-supervisor and oversees the wind tunnel lab there.
This tunnel had recently been relocated from the University of Technology Sydney campus to Macquarie, and very little was known about it's aerodynamic properties.
For this a 4 hole cobra probe with integrated pressure transducers was used, in conjunction with a static only pitot probe to provide reference pressure. These components were housed in a custom 3D printed enclosure which was then mounted in the end of a section of aerofoil section steel tube.
The aerofoil section eliminates the vortex shedding frequencies associated with a cylindrical tube, reducing noise in the signal. This whole assembly was mounted to a Dantec automated traverse and connected to a National Instruments Data Acquisition Card, allowing the entire rig to be controlled from the same computer with no human interaction. The rig was a great success, allowing quick characterization runs at varying speeds and room conditions (doors opened and closed), with each run only taking around 15 minutes to complete. With an average turbulence intensity of only 0.25% and a nicely uniform velocity profile, this tunnel is good to go!
Particle image velocimetry (PIV) is a non-intrusive, laser-based technique for measuring velocities in air (or water...!) flows.
Getting a new PIV system running consistently on a wind tunnel is no mean feat, as Kyle found out! To test out the system, a Tyrell T026 wing was set up in the Macquarie University tunnel, with PIV being used to measure wake velocity in a plane along the streamwise direction. To start with the laser sheet was aligned to the desired location, with a focus block being placed under the sheet. A 150mm lens was used on the cooled CCD camera, allowing it to be placed back 2 metres from the area of interest, reducing perspective error and improving access to the tunnel. After seeding the whole room with DEHS, the tunnel was run up to 15m/s and measurements were taken at a bunch of angles of attack, providing useful data for teaching purposes as well as troubleshooting the system.
Stay tuned for more FLIP updates from Kyle as he delves into the art and science of vortex generators and how to sustain vortices over extremely long distances.
FLIP PhD student Kyle Forster explains a bit about vortex generators for his adoring and non-adoring youtube audience.
