This paper presents the design method and the construction details of a subsonic low-speed wind tunnel, which has been designed to achieve the flow velocity of 35 m/s in the measurement section with expected uniform velocity field at its inlet. To achieve such objectives a very detailed design was performed using a theoretical 1D analysis and computational fluid dynamics simulations. This approach was applied to improve the flow quality along the wind tunnel sections. When the wind tunnel has been launched a direct comparison of the experimentally measured flow field in the test section and numerical simulation results was conducted. Such comparison of the simulation results with the experimental one is presented in this paper. The obtained results confirm that assumed wind tunnel design method was correct, i.e. the pressure drop in the wind tunnel has been predicted very well and drive system is effective and sufficient to accelerate the airflow to required values.

The paper presents numerical simulations related to the problem of how to obtain correct results in transonic wind tunnel during tests at high airfoil angles of attack. At this flow conditions, significant pressure losses appear in the test section, what leads to significant errors in measured data. Regarding the possible ways of tunnel reconstruction, we examined three different possibilities of changing the test section configurations: an increase of the test section height, displacement of the airfoil below the tunnel centreline and, finally, introduction of divergent test section walls. It was shown that neither the use of higher test section, nor the change of the airfoil location, gives any significant improvement in reference to the existing tunnel configuration. Only after divergent test section walls were introduced, the distributions of pressure coefficient became well consistent with their expected values.

The following paper presents wind tunnel investigation of aerodynamic characteristics of hovering propellers. This propulsion system may be applied on a lightweight Quad Plane VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). A Quad Plane is a configuration consisting of a quadcopter design combined with a conventional twin-boom airplane. This kind of design should therefore incorporate the advantages of both types of vehicles in terms of agility and long endurance. However, those benefits may come with a cost of worse performance and higher energy consumption. The characteristics of a fixed-wing aircraft and propellers in axial inflow are well documented, less attention is put to non-axial flow cases. VTOL propellers of a hybrid UAV are subject to a multitude of conditions – various inflow speeds and angles, changing RPMs, interference between propellers and between nearby aerodynamic structures. The tested system presented in this article consists of four electric motors with two coaxial pairs of propellers mounted on one of the fuselage beams. Such a configuration is often chosen by designers of small and medium hybrid UAVs. There is a need for studies of clean, efficient ways of transporting, and this article can aid future designers of a new type of electric UAVs.

There is an airflow velocity boundary layer near tunnel wall when the air is flowing in the underground coal mine. The thickness and distribution of the airflow velocity boundary layer could influence the discharge of harmful and toxic gases that enter the ventilating airflow through this flow interface. It may also have a major impact in coal mine gas explosion. The results of field measurements and simulation experimental data are used to research airflow velocity boundary layer in a flat walled mine roadway, which is considered in turn: as unsupported, I-steel sectioned arch or bolted and shot create supported cross section. By referenced to other literature studies that consider boundary layer characteristics and the analysis of on-site and experimental data sets we obtain the corresponding airflow velocity boundary layer characteristics for each of the supported roadway sections. The airflow velocity within the boundary layer increase is assumed to follow a logarithmic law given by the expression: u = a Ln(x) + b. It is concluded that the thickness of the airflow velocity boundary layer is observed to significantly decrease with the airflow center velocity and to increase with roadway wall roughness. The airflow velocity distribution is found to be described by the equation: u = (m1v + n1)Ln(d) + m2v + n2, for the three types coal mine tunnel taking into account the influence of center airflow velocity.

The microphone data collected in aeroacoustic wind tunnel test contains not only desired aeroacoustic signal but also background noise generated by the jet or the valve of the wind tunnel, so the desired aeroacoustic characteristics is difficult to be highlighted due to the low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). Classical cross spectral matrix removal can only reduce the microphone self-noise, but its effect is limited for jet noise. Therefore, an Airflow Background Noise Suppression method based on the Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (ABNSEEMD) is proposed to eliminate the influence of background noise on aeroacoustic field reconstruction. The new method uses EEMD to adaptively separate the background noise in microphone data, which has good practicability for increasing SNR of aeroacoustic signal. A localization experiment was conducted by using two loudspeakers in wind tunnel with 80 m/s velocity. Results show that proposed method can filter out the background noise more effectively and improve the SNR of the loudspeakers signal compared with spectral subtraction and cepstrum methods. Moreover, the aeroacoustic field produced by a NACA EPPLER 862 STRUT airfoil model was also measured and reconstructed. Delay-and-sum beamforming maps of aeroacoustic source were displayed after the background noise was suppressed, which further demonstrates the proposed method’s advantage.

The analyses aim to determine aerodynamic force coefficients in the case of airflow around two smooth or rough cylinders positioned at different angles to the direction of wind velocity. Such systems, for instance, may be part of a tubular water slide. The results were compared with the values of the interference coefficient of the cylinders arranged in a row included in Eurocode EN 1991 part 4. The aerodynamic forces of the cylinder systems were determined on the basis of experimental tests conducted in a wind tunnel. To verify the above results, CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulations were prepared. An important observation is that for the angle of yaw β = 0◦, the negative component of the lift force (lateral) fy is shown, while for the other cases, the situation is opposite and the lateral force points outside the gap (upward). The second is that the results of aerodynamic drag for rough cylinders arranged in a row and calculated according to EN 1991 part 4 may be underestimated. The flow around the pair of smooth cylinders is quite different from that of the rough ones, because during the experiment the first falls into the critical flow regime, while the second has supercritical characteristics.