DEVELOPMENT OF EXPERIMENTAL FACILITY FOR TESTING OF AERODYNAMIC SHAPES

Charles Darwin University (CDU), being the major University in the Northern Territory, is the first point of contact for many industry R& D queries. Recently, a number of problems with the fluid machinery have been reported. In addition, the School of Engineering and Information Technology (SEIT) at CDU is moving toward project based teaching strategies. The success of this approach, particularly where specialist subjects such as Fluid Mechanics are concerned, relies heavily on the available infrastructure, and particularly the experimental facilities. Although CFD is widely used to analyse the flow in various applications including aerodynamic shapes, experimental validation is sometimes necessary. Before this project, the wind tunnel at SEIT did not have the relevant measurement equipment installed for comprehensive investigation of aerodynamic shapes. In this work, the measurement and observation devices were designed and deployed to enhance the performance of the wind tunnel and expand the range of activities which can be performed.