CFD and Structural Analysis on Wind Tunnel

Wind tunnels are used for simulating aerospace systems flight conditions in the laboratory. In principle, these facilities include a gas supplying system (source), a nozzle that transforms the gas from reservoir conditions to test conditions, the test section, and finally a diffuser and an exhaust system. Several features characterize a given supersonic wind tunnel depending on its operating aspects. An unsteady wind tunnel was designed and built for the study of unsteady aerodynamics. The wind tunnel was designed as an open-loop configuration, and an active flow control system was designed as a series of horizontally aligned shutters placed in front of the test section which can block incoming airflow to create time-varying shear flows in the test section. The wind tunnel was constructed using primarily acrylic and plywood and was run by an axial fan. The active flow control system was composed of four shutters that were held in position and rotated using steel rods and actuators located just outside the shutter frame. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was used throughout the design processes, ensuring the generation of unsteady flows in the test section. Many problems involving the flow of fluid around submerged objects are encountered in the various engineering fields. Such problems may have either a fluid flowing around a stationary submerged object, or an object moving through a large mass of stationary fluid, or both the objects or the fluid being in motion. examples Which may be quoted are the motion of very small objects such as fine sand particles in air or water, very large objects such as airplanes, submarines, automobiles, ships etc., moving through air or water, and the structures such as buildings, bridges etc. which are submerged in air or water.