Date: November 7, 2019

To: Saptarshi Biswas

Lab Partners: Jeremy Mcgovern, Jaykumar Patel, Chenyu Wang & Michael Allan
Group: S-03
From: Edouard Buisson
Subject: Wind Tunnel Calibration

Introduction
The purpose of this experiment is to experimentally determine and compare how the flow area
changes throughout the test section of a wind tunnel along with calibrating the wind tunnel and
multiport pressure transducer. This was done on a closed loop wind tunnel of 20 feet in length.
The wind tunnel has a test section with dimensions of 24” by 36” and can produce a maximum air
velocity of 150 fps. The thickness of the boundary layer in the wind tunnel increases as the air
moves towards the exit which means that the flow area decreases throughout the length of the
tunnel. The area vs velocity relationship can be seen in this relation.
Ai Vi = Ae Ve Equation 1
The velocity and flow area at each section of the test area are inversely proportional. As boundary
layer thickness grows on the walls of the wind tunnel, the velocity of the flow will also increase.

Experimental Procedure
First the LabVIEW code must be reviewed in order to understand how the experiment could be
conducted. The code reads voltage input simultaneously through 7 ports on an Arduino board
and records the data over 50-time iterations. The 50 data points are recorded and saved in a text
file by the code which is then copied into excel where the 50 data points are averaged. This same
operation will be used for calibrating the pressure transducer and wind tunnel.

Inclined Manometer
Data Acquisition
System

Pressure Transducer
Mechanical Hand
Pump

Figure 1: Equipment used for Experiment

When calibrating the pressure transducer, data is collected while applying a known pressure to the
transducer. The hoses were located at 4, 120, and 212 inches from the contraction exit. The
pressure is applied using a mechanical hand pump and is measured using an inclined manometer
tube shown in Figure X. The hand pump was connected to the transducer where pressure is
recorded as inches of water and then converted into volts in LabView. The pressure was applied
from 0 to 4 inches of water at increments of 0.5 inches of water. A linear trendline was then created
from this data in which its slope will be used to convert voltage from the transducer into pounds
per square foot.
To calibrate the wind tunnel, hoses from the transducer lead to 4 different positions in the test
section. Pitot-static tubes were used to measure the static and total pressure at these locations. The
recorded data is then collected from the wind tunnel at 10 different air velocities and saved into
excel. The velocity was changed by adjusting the percent amount of power inputted into the fan.
After converting the data from voltage to pressure with the conversion factor explained above,
static and stagnation pressure can be solved. Once static and stagnation pressure is found, dynamic
pressure can then be determined by taking the difference between the total pressures and the static
pressures. Velocity can then be solved with dynamic pressure with Equation 2 below.
1
𝑃𝑜 − 𝑃𝑠 = 𝜌𝑉 2 Equation 2
2

Density is known to be 0.00292 slugs/ft^3 from the ideal gas law. This equation was used to find
velocity at the contraction exit. Afterwards, Equation 1 was used to find velocity at other locations.
Measuring the boundary layer thickness can be done with a pitot-static probe and a digital
manometer which reads dynamic pressure. The pitot-static tube is inserted into the tunnel at the
three different locations and is moved towards the inner wall until a drop in dynamic pressure is
read from the digital manometer. This pressure drop is caused by the pitot-static tube entering the
boundary layer at that location. The distance at which the pitot-static probe was inserted into the
tunnel would be recorded while considering the thickness of the wall. This length determines the
height of the boundary layer. The results for this test can be found in Table 2 below.

Digital Manometer

Pitot-Static Probe Air Speed Adjuster

Figure 2: Equipment used for the Experiment

Results and Discussion
25

20

y = 33.044x - 62.049
15
PSF

10

0
1.8 1.9 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5

-5
Voltage

Figure 3: Example Calibration Graph for Channel 1

The calibration for the pressure transducer is shown in Figure 3 for channel 1 where a linear graph is
showcased. The slope of the equation is the conversion factor to change measurements from LabVIEW into
PSF. It can be seen in the graph that a data point had been excluded from the best fit line. This is due to
beliefs that this data value significantly changes the trendline’s slope from what it should be.

Table 1: List of Calibration Factors for each Channel

Probe Locations Calibration Factor

Channel 1 (𝑃𝑆 ) 33.04426472
Channel 2 (𝑃𝑜 ) 33.172004
Channel 3 (𝑃𝑆 ) 33.17618
Channel 4 (𝑃𝑜 ) 32.9566
Channel 5 (𝑃𝑆 ) 33.00764
Channel 6 (𝑃𝑜 ) 33.01133658
Channel 7 (𝑃𝑆 ) 33.13528
Channel 8 (𝑃𝑜 ) 32.99934
Channel 9 (𝑃𝑆 ) 33.02072

These are the conversion values found when calibrating the pressure transducer at the different channels.
How these results were obtained is explained in the paragraph above and in the experimental procedure
section.
 25

20

15
y = 0.9896x
Delta P (PSF)

10 y = 0.8514x + 0.1011
y = 0.8712x + 0.0783
5
y = 0.9032x + 0.0672

0 y = 1.0004x - 0.0133
0 5 10 15 20 25
-5
q (PSF)

K at 4" K at 72" K at 152" K at 211" K Specific

Figure 4: Venturi Calibration at Four Locations

The data recorded in the venturi calibration test was converted into pressure at the corresponding channels.
The slope of the graph was used to determine what the K value would be at each location. Dynamic pressure
was calculated using Equation 2 and the calibrations were measured at the 4” mark, 72” mark, 152” mark,
and 211” mark. The measured data for all locations were below the K specific value of 0.98963 except for
the slope found at the 4-inch mark. This could be caused by a slight loss of air flow due to a hole at this
location of the test section.

Table 2: Boundary Layer Measurements and Calculations

Boundary Layer Rear (212 inches) Middle (120 inches) Front (4 inches)
Calculated 3.003 1.913 0.127
Measured 2.75 1.625 0.25
Percent Error 8.04% 17.72% 96.85%

Table 2 presents the boundary layer theoretical calculations and experimental measurements at three
different locations of the test section with 70% speed. The calculations were made with the relation below.
1
𝛿 = 0.37𝑥(𝑅𝑒𝑥 )−5 Equation 3
Reynold’s number would increase as the distance from the contraction exit increased. Although calculations
were made at many other locations, only the positions at which the measurements were made are shown
above for comparison. While the measurements were made, the wall thickness had to be accounted for.
This meant that a value of 0.5 inches had to be subtracted from the measured height of the boundary layer.
As it can be seen from the table above, the theoretical calculations were not close to the measured values.
However, several difficulties allow for these values to be acceptable. Such complications include struggling
to determine where the top of each boundary layer was with just a pitot static probe. Another reason for
error is the possibility that each marked location wasn’t exactly 212, 120, or 4 inches from the contraction
exit. And lastly, the large percent error values could be due to both measured and calculated values being
extremely small. This would comply with the fact that as the calculated and measured values decreased, the
percent error increased.
 1.02
1
0.98
0.96 y = -0.0004x + 0.9826
0.94
K

0.92
0.9
0.88
0.86
0.84
0 50 100 150 200 250
X (inches)

Measured K Value Theoretical K Value

Figure 5: K vs Distance from the Contraction Exit

After calculating the boundary layers, the area of air flow can also be determined and be used in Equation
4 below to find the K value at a certain location.
𝐴 2 𝐴 2
𝐾𝐺𝑒𝑛 = [(𝐴𝑥 ) − ( 𝐴𝑥 ) ] Equation 4
𝑒 𝑖

The K values were plotted and given a trendline to find K at any location of the test section. The measured
K values from the venturi calibration were plotted on the same graph for comparison. The majority of the
measured K values are shown to be lower than the calculated K values at their corresponding locations.
This is believed to be due to some minor air flow losses within the tunnel.

Conclusion
The purpose of this experiment was to determine and compare how the flow area and boundary layer
changes throughout the test section of a wind tunnel. Throughout this lab, three tests were completed to
carry out the experiment. First the pressure transducer had to be calibrated in order to accurately collect
pressure data from the wind tunnel. Secondly, the wind tunnel venturi had to be calibrated by measuring
pressure at three different locations of the wind tunnel. And finally, the thickness of the boundary layer at
three different locations of the test section was measured with 70% flow speed. The results from the
boundary layer thickness calculations correspond to the calculated flow area from the venturi calibration.
As the boundary layer increased throughout the wind tunnel the flow area decreased and therefore causing
the flow velocity to grow. The pressure transducer calibration showed the linear relationship between PSF
and voltage as the applied pressure was converted into voltage. It was found that the value of K described
what the wind tunnel calibration factor would be at desired locations across the wind tunnel. While, the
theoretical slope of the venturi calibration was determined to be 0.98963 at the contraction exit, only one
of the measured values from the four different locations was greater than this theoretical slope value. The
K value at the four-inch mark is believed to be larger because of an error at that location of the test section
such as loss of air flow. The calculated boundary layer heights were different from the measured data. This
is likely due to inaccurately measuring the boundary layer with the pitot static tube as it was difficult to
determine exactly where the boundary layer started from reading the digital manometer. Another error that
could have caused this is inexact labeled distances from the contraction exit. The data values for the applied
pressure of 4 inches of water were excluded when calculating calibration factor as it was found that these
values did not follow the linear behavior supported by the rest of the data for each different applied pressure.
This error could have been caused by not allowing the 50 data points to be completely recorded for this run.