Department of Mechanical Engineering

Twisted Flow Wind Tunnel

A large wind tunnel with a long duct with the ability to control wind speed and turbulence variation.

The Twisted Flow Wind Tunnel is a large wind tunnel, somewhat similar to a Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel with a long duct where blocks and barriers of different sizes may be placed on the floor to control the wind speed and turbulence variation with height. The wind tunnel has helped several America's Cup and Volvo 70 designers produce winning designs as it is has special vertical twisting vanes at the duct outlet enabling the direction of the flow in the test section to be varied in a controlled manner with height. In this way the "apparent" wind speed and direction onto the sails which varies with height when a yacht sails through the wind, can be simulated in a wind tunnel test on a stationary model. In its yacht-sail testing configuration, the wind tunnel test section is 7 m wide and 3.5 m high, and has a top speed of 8 m/s. The vanes can be removed and the walls of the wind tunnel duct contoured to give narrower outlets for testing smaller objects at greater speeds. The 3.5 m x 3.5 m square outlet is used for testing small wind turbines, model vehicles and tall buildings. The 2.5m wide x 3.5 m high outlet is used for tests to measure the aerodynamic drag of cyclists, and in this configuration the top speed is 60 km/h.

Participating faculty members

Associate Professor Peter J. Richards
Professor Gordon D. Mallinson
Professor Andy Philpott
Associate Professor Andrew Mason
Dr Rajnish N. Sharma
Dr Stuart Norris
Dr Ignazio Maria Viola
Mr David Le Pelley
Dr Nick Velychko