Thermal-Fluids Laboratory
The Thermal-Fluids Laboratory at Northern Arizona University is a modern research and instructional facility in the College of Engineering, Forestry and Natural Sciences. Recent research projects that have been conducted in the facility include experimental testing of the McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Notar (no tail rotor) concept, flow visualization through cascades of turbine blades, design of flow vanes for use in an exhaust stack at the APS Cholla power plant, and more.
Our undergraduates benefit from this laboratory, since it is also an instructional facility in which senior-level Mechanical Engineering students use state-of-the-art computerized data acqusition equipment to perform experiments. Lab exercises are conducted in fluid mechanics, heat transfer, and thermodynamics. Typical experiments include measurement of fluid dynamic drag, measurement of power output and efficiency from a Pelton turbine, and measurement of the forced convection heat transfer coefficient. Two important emphases in the laboratory are the design of experiment and report writing skills.
Facilities
- Computer data acquisition equipment
The laboratory contains six Dell Pentium computers with Data Translation data acquisition cards. Data acquisition programs can be easily written to monitor experiments using LabView software. The computers are linked with the college computing network and have access to a variety of data analysis tools. - Wind tunnel
The wind tunnel is a four inch diameter, cylindrical tunnel capable of variable flow velocities up to 10 m/s. This facility was used to design the flow vanes for the APS Cholla power plant. - Equipment to perform a variety of fluid mechanics, heat transfer, and thermodynamics experiments.
Contact:
Dr. Tom Acker, Professor
Mechanical Engineering Department
P.O. Box 15600
Flagstaff, AZ 86011-1560
E-mail: Tom.Acker@nau.edu
Phone: (502) 523-8363
