It has been often said that "a picture is worth a thousand words." The Flow Visualization Lab is the realization of this axiom in regard to fluid flow. Air is a "watery fluid" and the flow of water, which is more easily visualized than the flow of air, maybe used to learn a great deal about the basic mechanisms involved in both media. The principal equipment in this lab is a 45 cm x 45 cm test section water tunnel (see Fig. 12). The water tunnel has a maximum speed of 1.2 meters per second and is equipped latest instrumentation for visualization and flow measurements. This includes planar and stereoscopic particle image velocimeter, hot film anemometer, high speed imager, pulsed and continuous wavefront lasers for laser induced fluorescence, and a multiple color dye injection system.
Fig. 12 Water Tunnel in the Flow Visualization Lab
Specially designed flow tanks and channels for the study vortex dominated flows are also a part of the flow visualization laboratory. (see Fig. 13).
Fig. 13 PIV Measurements of a Synthetic Jet Flow Field.
