Project Description:
Having a hands-on lab component to fluid dynamics courses has always been an important part of the pedagogy. However, traditional instruction has required expensive room-sized equipment that is used by relatively large groups, limiting the time for exploration and real understanding of the important principles. The goal of this project is to develop a series of instructional kits that can be purchased by individual students and used at home, permitting a more creative and individualized exploration of the material, and a greater sense of ownership and depth of understanding. The kits that are planned or in development include: manometry, propulsion with thrust stand, wind tunnel with force balance, pipe flow losses, fan/pump characteristics, and flow separation with form drag. They are enabled by the recent development of high-power ducted fans, inexpensive DC power supplies, and affordable motor controllers. Students from ENME331 (Fluid Mechanics) can opt to perform their thrust stand lab on the prototypes in place of their traditional lab, giving the team an opportunity to analyze student interaction with the setup. A future objective is to develop these final parts for injection molding to deploy at scale.
