AME Subsonic Wind Tunnel
The AME subsonic wind tunnel was installed in 2013 with funding from AFOSR and the University of Arizona. The total project cost was about $2.5 million. This multi-purpose, optically accessible facility has a 3ft x 4ft x 12ft test section and a maximum velocity of 80 m/s (Remax≈5x106 m-1) with mean flow uniformity better than +/-0.5% across the operating range. Temperature is maintained within 1o F of ambient using a heat exchanger with chilled water supply. Turbulence intensity in the 5-80 m/s velocity range is less than 0.15% from DC-10 kHz and less than 0.05% from 1Hz-10kHz with some speeds even lower. A five component (normal/axial/pitch/yaw/roll) external pedestal balance, model positioning system and two-axis traverse are included with the facility. The experimental work is supported by the professional AME machine shop (4 full-time staff) equipped with several manual/CNC routers/mills/lathes and a composite machining laboratory.
The facility also includes the latest measurement equipment including:
- 2D/stereoscopic/tomographic PIV system with digital image correlation (DIC) for 2D or 3D measurement of structure deformation and strain (Lavision)
- 3D LDA system including laser, optics and automated traverse (Dantec)
- Miniaturized static pressure scanners (288 channels) capable of mounting outside the facility or inside models (Scanivalve ZOC33 and ZOC22)
- 16 channel high bandwidth signal conditioning amplifier (Ectron Model 563HL)
- 16 channel selectable low/high pass filters (Kemo Benchmaster 21M x2)
- 32 channel simultaneous sampling high-speed data acquisition system (National Instruments PXIe-1082 chassis, PXIe-8133 controller, 16ch PXIe-6358 boards-1.25MS/s/ch)
- 6 channel constant temperature anemometry (CTA) system (Dantec) with automatic calibrator and pitch/roll/yaw manipulator for multi-axis probes
- 40 high-bandwidth pressure sensors (Endevco Model 8570C-5)
- 4 channel microphone system including both diffuse and free field mics (Bruel and Kjar)
- Digital mass flow controller for use in active flow control research (Bronkhorst)
- Pressure and temperature sensitive paint system (ISSI); Multiple high voltage power supplies for ac and ns-DBD actuation
- Multiple smoke, oil and dye flow visualization systems
- Several PCs with multi-channel data acquisition boards (National Instruments)
- Several PCs and student offices for data analysis