Design and experimental investigation of a wind tunnel gust generator


YIĞILI İ., ANDIRIN M. A., Kurban E., BAŞKAN PERÇİN Ö., PERÇİN M.

11th Ankara International Aerospace Conference (AIAC 2021), Ankara, Turkey, 8 - 10 September 2021

  • Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
  • City: Ankara
  • Country: Turkey
  • Middle East Technical University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

This work aims at developing a two-vane gust generator for a small size open-loop wind tunnel to study the unsteady aerodynamic response of lift producing test models. The focus of the study is two-fold: (1) the design of a gust generator which produces the desired gust profiles by varying the parameters such as flow speed, pitching frequency of the vanes, maximum angle of deflection of the vanes and spacing between the vanes and (2) the experimental investigation of the gust velocity profiles via particle image velocimetry (PIV). Preliminary results of the numerical simulations reveal that a sinusoidally pitching vane design with NACA0015 profile is capable of generating a gust ratio of 0.15. The outcomes of this study will serve as a starting point for the design of a gust generator which will be placed in the Large Scale Wind Tunnel of METU Center for Wind Energy Research (RUZGEM).