New wind blowing

The Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering will begin research using a new wind tunnel to be located in the Engineering Building and housed by the Daimler Lab starting next month. The custom-designed wind tunnel is currently under construction in Wisconsin by Midwest Mechanics. 

NASA and the National Science Foundation have already funded research to be carried out in the wind tunnel. Assistant professor Raúl Bayoán Cal will head the research work.

About the wind tunnel
 “The cost of the wind tunnel is $500,000.  The wind tunnel includes state-of-the-art automation functions.” Cal said.

The wind tunnel is a one-of-a-kind, world-class facility to study fluid mechanics problems. It is unique in the sense that it possesses the capabilities of reproducing many fundamental flows as well as complex flows, he said.

“In this wind tunnel, we are planning to study turbulent flows including complex boundary layers [for example, effects of temperature gradients, pressure gradients, surface roughness and incoming turbulence levels], wind energy related problems as well as urban canopy flows,” Cal said.

Given the importance of the wind energy topic, Cal and his students will carry out experiments to study wind farms in a scaled and well-controlled environment such as in the tunnel.  It will help researchers gather information about the interactions between the massive rotating structures and the passing flow.

“The idea is to understand these flows from a fundamental point of view while being able to draw useful practical conclusions,” Cal said.

“These are obtained using a rather sophisticated laser-based instrumentation technique [tomographic particle image velocimetry] capable of mapping out velocity fields of these flows in the form of a volume in conjunction with other techniques, thus providing intrinsic information about the physics of the studied flows,” Cal said.

How it will help students
This wind tunnel will allow training for students at the highest possible level while obtaining their master’s degrees and doctorates, thus pushing the research boundaries in these areas. The wind tunnel will also encourage undergraduate students to take part in research, Cal said.

“The tunnel will also allow for undergraduate research opportunities in the aforementioned research areas.  At the K–12 level, it will provide a mechanism to motivate young students into the areas of STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics],” Cal said.   

“It is also an educational tool where students [from high school to the doctorate level] will be able to visualize concepts traditionally taught in a classroom environment, thus providing a more hands-on approach,” Cal said.

About Dr. Cal
 Cal, who holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering, is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Portland State. He also holds an appointment as a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University.

He received his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., in 2001, 2003, and 2006, respectively.  He holds another master’s degree in experimental and computational turbulence from Chalmers University of Technology, attained in 2006.

From 2006 to 2008, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins. Cal joined PSU’s faculty in 2009. Cal’s area of research is focused on understanding hydrodynamic turbulence and complexity in fluid mechanics in general. He uses theoretical and experimental tools to assess the behavior of the flow.

Cal has experience in experimental techniques such as tomographic particle image velocimetry, laser doppler velocimetry and hot-wire anemometry, used to quantify such flows in scaled environments like wind tunnels.