UTM Low-Speed Wind Tunnel

I've always admire the aeronautics sector and even more when I watched the making of Airbus A380 on NAt Geo. Pretty amazing, I must say. When people say about aeronautics, the first thing that come into our minds are planes and planes and more planes. Alright, today, open up your mind people, as aeronautics involves more than just aeroplanes flying above us all. It covers a vast application including our cars, bridges, buildings and even the lamp post by the roadside.

So, this post is actually a little about aeronautics and one of its equipment which is the wind tunnel.

I went to UTM yesterday to visit its wind tunnel and I must say, I wasn't let down and it was way better than what I had expected. To be honest, I was both excited and interested to find out about this low-speed wind tunnel with a maximum wind speed of 80m/s.

Its the first in Malaysia, designed in Canada, assembled here and located in UTM's aerolab. One of its pioneer, Prof. Ir. Dr. Shuhaimi told us that they took one year to design and another year to build the wind tunnel. This huge thing costs RM20million and they need about RM200K for maintenance every year. Interesting, and a huge lum sum needed.

Being one of the first, UTM renders services to companies such as Proton, lamp posts companies, and the latest being F1 I think, to do their research and come out with the best product/solution. A few Proton models such as Waja, Persona, Savvy and Exora were being sent there for some research but normally, the test done on these vehicles is just a quarter of it due to its small test section. Now the cost - standard price, RM6000 per day(working hours).

Well, that's a little introduction about the wind tunnel and now the pictures...

Thats Prof. Ir. Dr. Shuhaimi clad in Grey Shirt

This is an open wind tunnel courtesy of NUS, S'pore.

A blower tunnel

The front left quarter of a persona

The model of the wind tunnel

Part of the wind tunnel

Another

part of the wind tunnel

6 component balance

Well, this 6 component balance is placed right below the test section to collect data which is the 3 Forces and the 3 moments ie. Fx, Fy and Fz; Picthing moment, yawing moment and rolling moment ( Erm...I think I'm not wrong there).

Now, the test section:-

See this carefully and...you've got to come closer to the screen...

Test section with a Proton Waja prototype

Alright, see the movement of the wind??

(blown to the right side of the car)

See carefully, the white thing above the car...

One more clearer picture of it.

Right, if you noticed, the pictures above shows the movement of the wind and the white thing I was referring just then is the smoke produced by a smoke generator. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to see the wind blowing and its flow on the car.

And finally, BET always conquer everything..hehe. Just kidding. Well, instead of an SIEM trip, or a mechanical students' trip, it all turns into civil and electrical students' trip. To clear some things up, though this wind tunnel has got more benefits to the mechanical students, it is related with electrical and civil engineering. For electrical, you usually do the data collection part because they need your expertise. Its all yours. For civil, you need this to do building tests and bridges and come up with a certain flexibility, though it still look rigid to us. =)

BET at the test section

BET posing at the entrance

By the way, to the mechanical students, we'll try to organize another trip for you guys. Its in our planning. So, fret not. You'll definitely get an opportunity to see it. I don't mind going twice and I came back feeling inspired - I have an opportunity to venture into something else.

*CheeRs*