@peter, If you missed some lessons in aerodymanics, I missed two years at the end... (had enough).. :-) anyway, your answers inline... On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 5:35 PM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:
Well, my theoretical needs are not as complicated...
Given a choice of spoilers, I would want to know factually, which one will have less drag at the rear, I forget what they call that phenomenon which happens at the rear of a car without a spoiler.
DRAG, every moving body has it, its just a matter of how much.. there are fancy equations to derive what works best.
So, I was thinking that, the most simplistic one would be a pipe huge enough to fit a small car, then cut out a section of it and affix see through plexiglass or something, then fit a big fan on one side of the pipe, with a tiny pipe which releases coloured particles, so that one can see the airflow.
Id cut the wheel reinvention and look at formular 1 cars spoilers, and how they work. Wont be too far when doing the design. In fact, spoilers in formula 1 help in both braking, traction and steering, much like the tail of a cheetar, or the ailerons on an aircraft while landing and taking off...
@Steve, is this not a good enough need? It really doesn't have to be way complicated.
Plus I missed all the lessons on aerodynamics
On 9/28/12, Mark Mwangi <mwangy@gmail.com> wrote:
How large are the wind tunnels in question? Enough to fit a boeing Dreamliner or a tiny model plane?
On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 9:03 PM, Areba Collins [ @BrainiacKE ® ] < arebacollins@gmail.com> wrote:
I totally understand the misunderstanding william, Many people actually associate wind turbines to aeronautical designs and by their very nature, aeroplanes are generally not small creatures. Fortunately, for third world countries like we, the need for advanced wind turbines hardly justifies the costs considering the priorities we have. Technology such as i mentioned before however gives us a good opportunity to leapfrog the technological advantage by enabling even the poorest of design houses to make solid design decisions...
On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 8:48 PM, William Muriithi < william.muriithi@gmail.com> wrote:
Areba,
@william quite on the contrary, there are hundreds if not thousands
of wind
tunnels in the states, Any engineering university worth its name, and with an effective R & D program needs at least a wind tunnel, and its not as rocket sciency as it seems. Just a big fan and lots of sensors, and a smoke signal for the kicks. Without a wind tunnel, performance cars, boats, wind turbines, aeroplanes and many other moving parts cannot be designed to effective performance. Opps, yes I google and I was totally wrong. There is a number of tunnels in USA, the biggest one being NASA.
That being said, I can explain my misunderstanding. I tend to read a lot about airplane manufacturing and remembered reading that Boeing does some of their wind tunnel test in Europe. That is actually correct. The dreamliner (787) and 777 had part of their wind tunnel in Europe (Check wikipedia and a bit of google). So there is clearly something lacking in the USA tunnels
William
Onto answering you., How about you describe what you intend to achieve, Maybe software like Pro Engineer and simulation based apps may be
able to
give at least theoretical performance data enough to burn a few grand doing the concepts for real world testing... ama?
On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 7:00 PM, William Muriithi < william.muriithi@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Good people, > Might there be a "wind tunnel" somewhere in .ke? > Very expensive. Even USA shut down their wind tunnel. Boeing does their wind tunnel test in Europe now. The fact a country with an air-plane manufacturing sector could not keep their tunnel going just tell you how unlikely most of the other countries would entertain such an idea
William > By wind tunnel I mean a device with which one can test the aerodynamic > properties of body kits, spoilers, splitters, diffusers etc on cars... >