The team went to the lab with some lighting equipment
The team went in to test the viability of streamers as a flow visualization method. As a single, connected piece of material, a streamer did not give smooth and accurate portrayals of flow. Furthermore, it was difficult to photograph the streamers due to their erratic movement.
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three streamer set up, gives an idea of how the flow looks | One streamer, first the flow pretty well, all things considered |
The team went to the lab armed with a bigger smoke generator. The resulting stream was much stronger.
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As the smoke bends according to obstacles, it remains clearly visible. | The smoke is entered slowly, but accelerates according to the air flow around it. |
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It was difficult to seal the very hot opening of the smoke machine. | Tubes present an easy answer to smoke delivery. |
We went into the lab on 2/23/2012 Tried out the oil drop generator to see if the correspondence of inlet to test section is roughly 1 to 1. It basically is. The difference in side to side seems more dramatic in the test section.
Here are some pictures of the PIV system in action:
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First image. | Second image, taken quickly after the first image. | Third image, taken quickly after the second image. |
These successive images were used to generate a vector field for velocity.
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A vector field for the droplets of oil. The strange behavior on the left side of this diagram is useless data. |
The following are some tools we utilized.