Today I fired up the wind tunnel and were able to get data from 4 of the student's birds. The students have never done a lab investigation like this before, so I am having to teach them all sorts of stuff.
Today we just set up the birds and collected some data. Monday we'll complete the data gathering and then begin to analyze what we got.
I took off the upper A-arm on the wind tunnel's suspension system. The balsa wood is strong enough not to need the second arm. The second arm was adding friction and weight into the system.
The fan I borrowed for today's session is a small Electrolux. It is pushing air through the test chamber at 1.1 to 1.2 m/s (about 2.4 mph). I designed the wind tunnel to use a large volume window fan. Even with the small fan, the bird pictured produced a net lift force of 1.1 g, (with a slight nose-up attitude) so this bird can fly.
More on this project next week.
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