Design of Gust Wind Tunnel With Unsteady and Shear Main-Flows

Abstract

Micro air vehicles (MAVs) have been developed for many fields. The MAVs usually receive strong impact from a velocity change in time or space, and facilities for aerodynamic experiments of MAVs under a gusty environment have been required. The present study has developed a gust wind tunnel to generate unsteady and non-uniform flows. We developed a small wind tunnel with eight multi-fans and a shutter mechanism at the upstream of the test section. We controlled the outputs of the fans independently and obtained a linear shear layer with an error of 5 percent. The velocity gradient of the shear layer was from 5 to 8 s−1. The shutter mechanisms provided a longitudinal gust with the velocity change from 2 m/s to 10 m/s within 0.3 seconds.