Design and Construction of a Wind Tunnel at LIU

The wind tunnel is a very powerful and versatile tool that has been used in mechanical engineering labs since more than a century. It was first used to help in designing airplanes; in studying their shapes to have best lift forces. Then, it was used to study aerodynamic forces on automobiles to reduce the fuel consumption exhaust gases emissions, and improve their stability.

This instrument is also used to study static forces  on  high towers, bridges, and electric transmission  lines  to optimize their  design and costs. Nowadays, the use of wind tunnels expanded to study complex pollution dispersion problems to avoid its effect on buildings and humans downstream the pollution source. For example, the dispersion of exhaust gas in urban area downstream Al Zouk Power Plant.

A wind tunnel, of overall length of 5 m and maximum width of 1.70 m, was designed and built at LIU during a senior project course by three B.S. mechanical engineering students: Ghina Kang ,Rawan Alwan and Weam BoEmad under the supervision of Dr. M.Farid Khalil. This tunnel has a test section of 30X 30 X 100 cm and using an axial fan of 3kW and 18,000 m3/hr to move air at a velocity near 40 m/s through the test section. Velocity and pressure sensors were attached to the wind tunnel to measure air velocity and pressure distribution around test models during testing. Force transducers were also added to measure aerodynamic lift and drag forces exerted by the air flow on the test models. Using the data collected by the wind tunnel, one can calculate the expected forces and pressures for the original bodies such as towers, cranes, cars which would be used in their design calculations.

This project will open new horizons and challenging subjects for future students at LIU, where new proposals can be offered in the aim of improving the technical expertise of students in the fields of fluid mechanics, wind energy applications, and pollution control. The experimental results that will be extracted from this instrument can be used in future senior projects and also in master theses projects in addition to carrying studies to serve the engineering community in Lebanon.

The real importance of such a project is that it exposed MENG students at LIU to a hand-on experience in the design and construction of an important application in the field of aerodynamics. The total cost of this homemade wind tunnel was about $ 6000, whereas the cost of this instrument imported from a supplier is not less than $ 100,000. In this regard, the financial support from LIU is highly appreciated.