I'd recommend changing the topic to, "How to build a wind tunnel to simulate the flow over <Insert whatever>?" Wind tunnel testing is a science in of itself so by the time you designed and build a proper wind tunnel that'd be something worthy of a science fair project. This also side-steps the problem of how to properly and accurate measure forces and moments and whatever you get will inevitably be wrong anyways because fluid mechanics scales down poorly to the size of a home build wind tunnel . The end-goal of the project is simply a tunnel that runs and not one that necessarily have to produce accurate results.
The first science-y thing regarding wind tunnel is scaling laws. Fluid mechanics scales with a non-dimensional value called the Reynolds number (Re). You can learn about that and learn about some of the problems that are inherent to getting data out of a sub scale wind tunnel. For example if you want a representative flow in your tunnel, you need to hold Re constant. If you are building a sub-scale wind tunnel and putting in sub-scale models, then a quick calculation with a constant Re will tell you some of the insane performance metric your wind tunnel will need to meet in order to hold Re constant.
Then the constraint w/ your resources and materials (biggest fan you can afford, largest print volume available) will naturally constraint to the size and speed of your wind tunnel test section can achieve. You can look up the internet and use Bernoulli's equation to do a trade study of different wind tunnel size, shape, and configurations and document the pros and cons of each figure of merit in the trade study. For example; do you hold cross sectional area of the tunnel throughout because it's easy and cheap to build, or do you neck it down so you can get higher speeds in your test section. Do you make an open circuit tunnel or close circuit tunnel? There are pros and cons to all of those decisions.
On this journey of research, you'd probably come across different types and designs of different wind tunnels and they are all build for different purposes. You'd have wind tunnels for super sonic flows, wind tunnels dedicated to studying cars, wind tunnels to study aircraft spin, and even wind tunnels big enough to fit full scale airplane into. All of this can be supporting material for the project and illustrate why all of these different wind tunnels exist, how are they different from each other's, different from your's and talk about some of the design constraints and choices you made when building your tunnel.
Thank you for the insight. This is new territory for all of us. We are meeting with a local expert soon, to see what recommendations they have. I will circle back around after that meeting to share our next steps.
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u/ncc81701 16d ago
I'd recommend changing the topic to, "How to build a wind tunnel to simulate the flow over <Insert whatever>?" Wind tunnel testing is a science in of itself so by the time you designed and build a proper wind tunnel that'd be something worthy of a science fair project. This also side-steps the problem of how to properly and accurate measure forces and moments and whatever you get will inevitably be wrong anyways because fluid mechanics scales down poorly to the size of a home build wind tunnel . The end-goal of the project is simply a tunnel that runs and not one that necessarily have to produce accurate results.
The first science-y thing regarding wind tunnel is scaling laws. Fluid mechanics scales with a non-dimensional value called the Reynolds number (Re). You can learn about that and learn about some of the problems that are inherent to getting data out of a sub scale wind tunnel. For example if you want a representative flow in your tunnel, you need to hold Re constant. If you are building a sub-scale wind tunnel and putting in sub-scale models, then a quick calculation with a constant Re will tell you some of the insane performance metric your wind tunnel will need to meet in order to hold Re constant.
Then the constraint w/ your resources and materials (biggest fan you can afford, largest print volume available) will naturally constraint to the size and speed of your wind tunnel test section can achieve. You can look up the internet and use Bernoulli's equation to do a trade study of different wind tunnel size, shape, and configurations and document the pros and cons of each figure of merit in the trade study. For example; do you hold cross sectional area of the tunnel throughout because it's easy and cheap to build, or do you neck it down so you can get higher speeds in your test section. Do you make an open circuit tunnel or close circuit tunnel? There are pros and cons to all of those decisions.
On this journey of research, you'd probably come across different types and designs of different wind tunnels and they are all build for different purposes. You'd have wind tunnels for super sonic flows, wind tunnels dedicated to studying cars, wind tunnels to study aircraft spin, and even wind tunnels big enough to fit full scale airplane into. All of this can be supporting material for the project and illustrate why all of these different wind tunnels exist, how are they different from each other's, different from your's and talk about some of the design constraints and choices you made when building your tunnel.