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Credit: Chris 73

Bird Wind Tunnel Published in RSOS

The performance of our new wind tunnel has now been measured and published in Royal Society Open Science. The turbulence level of the airflow is less than 0.03% and the wind tunnel is very quiet, perfect for low Reynolds number studies. Other features include an active turbulence generation system that can generate turbulence levels ranging from 16 to 45%. This system recreates environmental turbulence levels that are typical for the natural habitats of birds and urban environments for which we are designing our aerial robots. The open jet test section enables future tests with high-speed fluoroscopy to image how birds adjust the motion of their skeleton to fly in turbulence. With these abilities the new facility complements existing facilities in unique ways not found anywhere else. More wind tunnel design details as well as our detailed wind tunnel performance data can be found in our journal paper . 


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