Students of St Joseph's Engg College, Mangalore, develop advanced aerodynamic research tool.
In what could be one of the most innovative student projects in material testing equipment in recent years, four final year mechanical engineering students of St Joseph’s Engineering College, Mangalore, have designed a wind tunnel capable of taking up low-speed testing of aero foils, buildings, cars and aircraft.
If that is not all, the wind tunnel is capable of getting values more accurate than most models that are available for commercial applications in the country. “In terms of accuracy, our tunnel has been designed to get accurate values in many applications. We re-calibrated the values acquired on our tunnel with an other tunnel and found ours more accurate. We built it at a cost of Rs60,000 and we even got a recognition from the Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology, Bangalore, in the form of a scholarship,” Ashrin Shannon Vas, team leader of the group, told dna.
Their faculty-guide, Rudolf D’Souza, could not be happier when the group announced that the model was ready for testing on a commercial basis with some modifications.
“Wind tunnels are a standard experimental facility in research units like ISRO, DRDO, IITs, NITs and a few well known engineering institutions, but all of them are designed and fabricated at stupendous costs by experts. St Joseph’s College is happy that it got its own wind tunnel designed and fabricated by its own students, which gives accurate values,” he said.
“The wind tunnel is mainly characterised by the size of the test section. In this design, the tunnel has a square section measuring 30cm X 30cm. This size is well suited for low speed and tests have been carried out at velocities up to 32 metres per second. For creating wind streams, a fixed vane axial fan is used, which rotates at 6000 rpm, powered by a 1.5 kw induction motor,” said another member of the group, that includes Gladwin Gregory D’Souza, Alister Gleason D’Souza, and Aston Preetham D’Souza.
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