Seminar on Surging Flow for Wind Tunnel Flight Testing

Join the online seminar "Surging Flow for Wind Tunnel Flight Testing" presented by Dr. Nicholas Kay, Research fellow at the University of Auckland.

Recreating real-world unsteady flows is critical to accurate wind tunnel testing. However, it can also be beneficial to instead decompose the flow into different frequency components, and assess system response at each frequency. Such a capability is possible with active flow control methods. In this work, a surging flow capability is developed for free-flight testing of Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Retrofitted to a general-purpose wind tunnel, this represents a low-cost means of producing repeatable flow surges in a large test environment. The frequency and magnitude of the surges produced are assessed, and an example is given of its use for flight testing UAVs.

Nicholas received his PhD from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 2021, his thesis, “Aerodynamic Response of a Two-Dimensional Cambered Wing at Low Reynolds Numbers in Steady-State Onset Turbulence”, examining the unsteady aerodynamics of Low Reynolds Number Aerofoils, in the context of small, Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). As a Research Fellow with the Drone Technology Research Group at the University of Auckland, his current research involves the simulation and flight testing of multirotor UAVs in the wind tunnel environment.