[NSRCA-discussion] Wind tunnel

[Earl Haury]

Re: [NSRCA-discussion] Wind tunnelI experimented with looking at cooling air flow using smoke with limited success. Airflow can be simulated with fans & cardboard flow straighteners / aircraft prop - motor (be careful) - and even leaf blowers / shop vac exits with varying degrees of success. A mini - webcam mounted in a fuselage (with lighting) provides some view of smoke flow inside a closed fuse.

However - making enough non - corrosive or non - oily smoke (at a reasonable price)  is an issue. Most of the smoke "wands" produce a corrosive element in the smoke.  Most of the smoke generators produce an oily smoke that leaves an oily residue. I don't want either in my airplane / equipment. 

The best I found are smoke "pens" used in the HVAC service industry - they consist of a wax impregnated wick that smokes similar to an extinguished birthday candle. Unfortunately, the amount of smoke is limited and becomes diluted (invisible) at the airflows we'd like to investigate. These were useful in determining the shape / edge of air inlets so that minimum air was diverted around the inlets.

Earl
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Mark Atwood 
  To: NSRCA Mailing List 
  Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 1:26 PM
  Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] Wind tunnel


  I speak from VERY limited experience, however the simple version appears to be to "pull" the air over the surface rather than push it.  They used a large fan to evacuate the room and provided small controlled inlets for air to enter and flow over the surface.  The smoke is simply from colored smoke sticks, though I'm not sure of the source of those.  

  I'm curious though how representative that is of the actual "Flow" over the object.  


  On 1/23/07 2:17 PM, "J.Oddino" <joddino at socal.rr.com> wrote:


    Anyone know what they use in those automobile ads that shows how the air flows over their slick streamlined cars?
    I was thinking one might determine what the cooling airflow looked like around and through our electric motors.

    Jim O


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    _______________________________________________
    NSRCA-discussion mailing list
    NSRCA-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
    http://lists.nsrca.org/mailman/listinfo/nsrca-discussion





------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  NSRCA-discussion mailing list
  NSRCA-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
  http://lists.nsrca.org/mailman/listinfo/nsrca-discussion
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.nsrca.org/pipermail/nsrca-discussion/attachments/20070123/d99f7221/attachment-0001.html