Design and Development of a Small-Scale Wind Tunnel for Flow Visualization

Abstract

A small-scale wind tunnel model with a length of 100 cm was designed and manufactured for flow visualization. The flow was visualized by using a mini smoke generator developed specialized for this small-scale wind tunnel and used the same principal as the conventional fog generator. To capture the flow motion, several parameters such as honeycomb screens, illumination systems, smoke liquids and fan speeds were varied to illustrate the smoke lines that represent the flow characteristics. The qualitative results based on these various configurations were presented and discussed in this paper with clear visibility for the smoke line intensity at 6 m/s with an airfoil used as the model to effectively demonstrate the flow visualization.