Micro Air Vehicle Scale Gust-Wing Interaction in a Wind Tunnel

Abstract

Andre for being a source of insight from people who have "been there". And to Jonathan and Hulya for helping me survive classes and keeping me sane. And a final thanks to my family and friends outside of the University for their support. With a special thanks to my fiancé, Caitlyn.

A combined experimental and computational study of a vertical gust generator in a wind tunnel

“…Flow characterization results from Smith 6 showed that the jet from the gust inlet bent in the freestream direction, effectively causing a blockage effect, which accelerated the flow upward. This effect generated a gust magnitude, V/U∞, of greater than 35%.…”

“…1. The design of the gust generate was highly detailed in Smith et al 5 and Smith 6 . The gust generator was characterized using PIV for its effectiveness in changing the flow angle at a wing model location in the tunnel.…”

“…For the gust inlet and outlet, the Gaussian profile velocity was implemented as the boundary condition. For this study, the gust velocity is only in vertical direction and is given as = (0, , 0), where = 2.39 * −� −� 51.22 � 2 measured experimentally 6 . In the simulation for the airfoil at Reynolds number 1,000 and 12,000, the gust was turned on at the start of the simulation.…”

“…This study undertakes a comparison of gust wing interaction simulated experimentally with a vertical gust generator in a wind tunnel environment and numerically with advanced unsteady CFD tools. Experimental results from Smith et al 5 are further analyzed and used to develop inlet and boundary conditions of a CFD model of the experimental setup. This CFD model will be used to further explore extremely time consuming experimental variables, such as turbulence reduction, and widen the understanding of mechanism of gust generation in a wind tunnel.…”

Computational Study of Flapping Wing Response to Vertical Gusts at Low Reynolds Numbers

“…While computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies of gust interactions are not uncommon [3][4][5] , they are seldom thoroughly compared to experimental results under different gusty conditions; and results on gust mitigation with flapping wings are limited. In our recent studies [6][7][8] , a comparison of gust wing interaction simulated experimentally with a vertical gust generator in a wind tunnel environment and numerically with advanced unsteady CFD tools has been carried out. Experimental results from Smith et al 7,8 are used to develop inlet and boundary conditions of a CFD model of the experimental setup 8 .…”