Birds are highly adaptive to turbulent flow structures; however, it is not fully understood how turbulent flow patterns influence the natural flight patterns of birds. While inspiration for this project stems from the natural flapping flight of European Starlings, an analogous engineering system was chosen in order to better understand the fundamental effects of periodic, turbulent flow structures on a downstream entity. This engineering system consisted of a.) a 3D printed NACA 0012 airfoil mounted to a force/torque transducer and b.) a wake generator pitching an airfoil at various frequencies. Measurements were taken using various wind tunnel speeds and pitching frequencies of the wake generator. The resulting variations in the coefficient of lift shows a highly periodic pattern in time series, which corresponds to the vortex shedding pattern of the wake generator. Comparisons between measurements in the model system and flow field visualization will be discussed.
Ayala, Raul, Ozcan, Evrim, and Ramirez, Jared,
"Characterizing forces on a wing ‘surfing’ due to an upstream wake generator"
(2022).
Summer Research Symposium.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/2g5a-kh89
Each year, Brown University showcases the research of its undergraduates at the Summer Research Symposium. More than half of the student-researchers are UTRA recipients, while others receive funding from a variety of Brown-administered and national programs and fellowships and go …
