Mangalore: St Joseph's Engineering College students develop wind tunnel

Media Release

Mangalore, Jul 18: A group of enthusiastic and promising engineers, the students of final year mechanical engineering of St Joseph Engineering College, Vamanjoor, have built a wind tunnel for low speed testing models of aero-foils, buildings, cars, aircraft etc.

Wind tunnel is a commonly available experimental facility in research facilities like ISRO, DRDO, IITs, NITs and a few well known engineering institutions. The cost of the equipment being high, many institutions do not own such facility.

Gladwin Gregory D’Souza, Alister Gleason D’ Souza, Ashrin Shannon Vas and Aston Preetham D’ Souza, under the guidance of Rudolf D’ Souza, assistant professor, department of mechanical engineering, built the wind tunnel.

The wind tunnel is mainly characterized by the size of the test section; in this design the tunnel has a square section measuring 30 cm X 30 cm. This size is well suited for low speeds and tests have been carried out at velocities up to 32 meters per second. For creating wind streams, a fixed vane axial fan is used, which rotates at 6000 rpm powered by a 1.5 kW induction motor.

The entire project cost Rs 60,000 and this project is supported partly by the college and the Karnataka State Council for Science & Technology (KSCST).

Use of Wind Tunnel

We use a number of means to travel, such as cars, motorbikes, buses, airplanes and many more. When they are moving at very high speeds, they experience forces exerted by the wind that surrounds them. These forces sometimes help us travel faster or save energy and vice-versa. The wind forces acting on the moving vehicles depend on the shape of the vehicle and the study of such forces is called Aerodynamics. These forces are of great concern while designing aircraft or rockets, which move at high velocities. In order to study the influence of wind on the moving bodies, wind tunnel is employed.

Wind tunnel creates near-similar wind conditions as it prevails in the nature when bodies move at high velocities. For this purpose scaled down models of automobiles or aircrafts are kept inside the tunnel and high velocity airstreams are created and forces acting on the model are analyzed using suitable force measuring devices. Such measurements help in refining the body design of automotives or aircrafts.