CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Introduction

With the advent of high performance computers, the wind tunnel designs have
remarkably improved. Improvement in the wind tunnel design leads to much controlled
performance. In order to reduce the turbulence and improve flow uniformity, new shapes
for contraction section and honey comb structures are developed. Over the past decades
lots of research have been done to optimize the shape of the contraction section of the
wind tunnel. Many researchers have developed new shapes for contraction section which
are latter numerically and experimentally validated. Some researchers have tried different
combination of honey shapes and size along with screens of different sizes to reduce
turbulence. This section gives a brief on some of the works done on the contraction
section, combination of honey comb and screen and complete methodology for wind
tunnel design.

2.2 Literature review

Prof. Dr. Ihsan Y. Hussain et.al. In their work” design, construction and testing of low
speed wind tunnel with its measurement and inspection devices” has designed and
constructed a low speed open circuit wind tunnel. In their work they have also describe
the design calculation, simulation and construction of the wind tunnel. The proposed wind
tunnel has a test section with cross-sectional area of (0.7x0.7m^2) and length of 1.5m.
The maximum speed is about 70m/s with empty test section. The contraction ratio is
about 8.16. A total of three screens were used to minimize the flow disturbance in the test

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section. The fan used in the wind tunnel were powered by75hp AC motor[2].

Fig 2.1: wind tunnel parts

Fig 2.2: contraction wall shape Fig 2.3: test section solution

Saiful A. Siddique in his work “Design , develop and CFD validation of a subsonic wind
tunnel” redesigned a low speed open type wind tunnel which was supposed to be used
experimental investigation, observation and demonstration of a compressible fluid flow
phenomenon. The wind tunnel was designed to operate upto 85mph in 200x200mm^2 test
section. A CFD model of the wind tunnel was developed and analyzed in commercial
CFD software Fluent13. The meshed geometry was composed of 93,903 nodes of
tetrahedral elements. RNG K-epsilon turbulence model with scalable wall function was
used as turbulent model[3].
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Fig 2.4: assembly drawing of wind tunnel

Fig 2.5: total pressure distribution

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Fig 2.6: velocity magnitude in wind tunnel

Fig 2.7: comparison between CFD and experimental velocity results

Vinayak kulkarni et al, in their work ”simulation of honey comb screen combination for
turbulence management in a subsonic wind tunnel”, addresses the design aspect of honey
comb and screens for a open circuit wind tunnel installed at IITG, India. The
effectiveness of the honey comb and honey comb-screen combination is studied by
simulating the flow field by using a commercial CFD package ANSYS - CFX.
Turbulence modeling is done by RNG K-epsilon turbulence model with scalable wall
function. The simulation was done for honey comb of different length, cell shape and
screens of different open area ratio and were found to be in a good agreement with
experimental and theoretical result[4].

Fig 2.8: geometric parameters of honey comb structures

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Fig 2.9: geometric parameters of screens

A total of three different cross-section ( circular, square and hexagonal) combined with
screens(up to 3) have been considered for the turbulent management. While developing
the computational model it was observed that computationally it is very difficult to
provide the realistic non-uniform condition at the entry of the settling chamber as
experienced in the experiments. Such random inlet conditions would essentially simulate
the realistic case in which air can enter the wind tunnel from any direction and at any
level of turbulence.

Fig 2.10: geometry of computational domain for(a) honey comb alone and (b) honey comb with
one screen ( c)square cell (d) circular cell ans ( e) regular hexagonal cell honeycomb.

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Fig 2.11: geometry used to create practical situation at honey comb inlet

Kahraman Albayrak in his work “ Design of a low speed axisymmetric wind tunnel
contraction” presents a method to design a three dimensional contraction based on the
expansion of the stokes stream function in a series in terms of the distance in the
longitudinal direction and radial distance from the axis of contraction. This method of
design requires a suitable function for variation of velocity along the axis of the
contraction. In his work the variation of velocity along the axis of contraction is selected
such that the velocity increases gradually in the upstream direction and converges rapidly
to a value of exit velocity in the downstream direction. In this way the velocity peak on
the wall of the contraction is decreased without increasing the length of the
contraction[5].

The function used for variation of velocity along the axis of the contraction is achieved by
modifying the function for u (x,0) given by Cohen and Ritchie;

u( x,0)  a  b1 tanh( k1 x)  b2 exp( k2 x 2 )

Where,

a  4.2,

b1  3.2

b2  0.8

1
k1 
2
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k2  0.3

And the area ratio is given as;

 b1 
1  
a  a  b1 
AR   
 b1  a  b1 
1  
 a

The velocity variation along the wall shows a considerable peak at the inlet regions and
the length of the contraction is large. However, the shape the shape of the velocity
variation might be improved and the length of the length of the contraction might be
decrease by shifting the exponential right and the selecting the constants properly in the
equation given by Cohen and Ritchie.

The new modified function was given as;

u ( x,0)  a  b1 tanh( k1 x)  b2 exp( k 2 ( x  x0 ) 2 )

Where;

a  5.5

b1  4.5

b2  0.1

k1  1

k2  16 / 9

x0  0.6

The main features of the new design are compared with that of the design given by Cohen
and Ritchie and following conclusion were made;

1. The present design yields considerably shorter contractions. The ratio of the length to
entrance diameter of the contraction is low. Even though the area ratio of the present
contraction is high, the present contraction length is shorter.

2. At the inlet regions of the contraction designed by Cohen and Ritchie, the velocity
drops on the wall about 70% of the upstream value, whereas for the present design, the

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minimum value of the velocity on the contraction wall at the inlet is 95% of the entrance
velocity.

Anish Kumar Singh et.al. in their work “ Design and CFD Analysis of contraction wall
profile of open circuit blow down type wind tunnel” designed the contraction wall profile
of small speed open circuit blow down type wind tunnel based on the design rules given
by R.D. Mehta. They have validated the design using commercial CFD code Fluent 6.3.

They have identified several desirable characteristics that a contraction wall profile must
posses. This characteristic includes, a wall profile having first and second derivative equal
to zero at the inlet and outlet, inlet and outlet profile radii roughly proportional to the
area i.e, the inlet radius is greater than the outlet radius. With this characteristics most
favorable condition of flow uniformity, thin boundary layer and negligible losses is hoped
to achieve[6].

A fifth degree polynomial developed by Bell and Mehta (1988) is most widely used for
design of low speed wind tunnel contraction profile which is given as;

 
h   10 3  15 4  6 5 H i  H o   H i 
X
 .
L

Where H i and H o are the height of the contraction wall at the inlet and outlet
respectively from the datum at the axis of symmetry.

Using a transfer function to transfer function to transform Bell and Mehta’s polynomial to
arbitrary inlet and outlet heights, while incorporating the change in shape provided by
raising the polynomial to a power less than unity. The following transfer function is
provided by Brassard and Dr. Mohsen Ferchichi (2005) as

 
h   10 3  15 4  6 5 H i
1 1
 Ho  H 
i
1 

Where  is some of  defined for 0    1 .

It was shown that any function  chosen for the above equation, normalized to vary
between 0 and 1, will result in smooth function, maintaining first and second derivative at
inlet and outlet of the resulting contraction profile.

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Fig 2.12: Contraction wall profile when  =1

Fig 2.13: Contraction wall profile when  =0.5

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Fig 2.14: Contraction wall profile when  =  2

Fig 2.15: Contraction wall profile when  = sin 

Finally for the design of proposed wind tunnel  is chosen as sine function of  , it
generate large radius at inlet, a smaller radius at outlet while maintaining a longer
transition of the outlet radius to the test section.

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Fuh-min Fang et al, in their work Experimental and analytical evaluation of flow in a
square-to-square wind tunnel contraction” investigated the flow characteristics within a
square-to-square contraction, numerically and experimentally so as to gain additional
insight into the contraction design. The problem of the contraction design is to search for
a optimum shape with minimum nozzle length for a desirable flow quality at the nozzle
end. When the length is reduced, the contraction cost less and fits into smaller space. In
addition, the boundary layer will generally be thinner due to the combined effects of the
decreased length of the boundary layer development and increased favorable pressure
gradient in the contraction. However the possibility of the flow separation increases.
Morel proposed the use of combination of two matched cubics, each having its apex at
one end of the contraction, as a basic shape of 2-D and axisymmetric contractions design.
When the dimensions of the upstream and downstream sections and nozzle length is
fixed, the location of the matched points becomes the only parameter to determine the
entire wall shape. The geometry of the square-to-square nozzle prototype is shown in the
figure 2.16[7] .

Fig 2.16 : Description of the contraction prototype

The size of the inlet and exit cross-sections are, 2.40m x2.40m and 0.80m x 0.80m
respectively. The nozzle length (L) is 3.6m. The location of the matched point is selected
as 1.80m. The shape of the contraction is the result of a combination of two matched
cubics,

 1 x 
3

y  (h1  h2 ) 1  2     h2 x  xm
 X m  L  

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y
h1  h2  1  x 3  h x  xm
 
1  X m 2  L  2
Where h1 and h2 are the half widths of the inlet and exit section of the nozzle
respectively.

Fig 2.17: Schematic of the contraction (half plane)

The experimental setup consists of three rows of pressure taps set along the center-lines of the
top, bottom and one of the sidewalls of the contraction prototype. In addition hot wire
anemometry is used to measure the mean velocity (x component). For a typical velocity
measurement, signals are recorded within a period of 2 min with a sampling rate of 2 samples/s.
The measurements and numerical simulations are performed under the condition that the velocity
at the nozzle exit section is 15m/s. The results obtained are shown in the following figure 2.18 ,
2.19 , 2.20 .

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Fig 2.18: Sectional velocity profiles (x/L=0.32, 0.51, 0.68 and 1.0): (a) calculated; (b) measured

Fig 2.19: Variation of velocity non uniformity

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Fig 2.20: Comparison of pressure distribution along wall center-lines

Kaven Ghorbanian et al. In their work “ experimental investigation on turbulence

intensity reduction in subsonic wind tunnel” performed experiments to study the impact
of trip wires on the turbulence intensity in a few low speed wind tunnels. They used
different sizes of trip wires at different positions in the contraction section of the four
different wind tunnels and measurements ere made at various free stream velocities.it was
found that on using the trip wire the adverse pressure gradient moves toward the inlet of
the contraction section. Consequently the intensity in the test section is reduced and flow
uniformity is improved considerably. The Fig 2.21 Shows the position of the trip wires

Fig 2.21: Schematic of the contraction and position of trip wires.

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Table 2.1 : summary of the investigated experiment

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