The development of an experimental aerodynamics research center in Brazil

Abstract

The present work describes the recent activities of the Experimental Aerodynamics Research Center (CPAERO) concerning all the efforts devoted to develop capacities on both experimental and numerical aerodynamic and aeroacoustic techniques applied for solving fundamental and industrial flows.Despite the low investment of resources by the Brazilian government and ruptures in institutional policies in the last decade, over the past 05 years it has been possible to build a medium-size low-speed subsonic wind tunnel and acquire, as well as design and build, various apparatus for laboratory and open field studies.The main activities are developed in the sectors of aeronautical, automobile and alternative energy sources such as wind energy. However, other applications are under development in fields such as fluid-structure interaction, drone noise and calibration of wind tunnels and anemometric sensors.To support the experimental studies, special attention was given to computational aerodynamics through the use of open source codes for the design of airfoils, wings and more complex flow-body simulations in computational fluid dynamics (CFD).Growing interface with local and national companies is taking place, as well as research partners with other universities and research centers. Some results are presented for unconventional aircraft analyses, commercial vehicles such as sedan and pick-up’s aerodynamics, flow over cylinders with different aspect ratios as well as experimental and numerical data for finite-height surface-mounted cylinders. Recent and new approaches are provided for designing biomimetic blades for small-scale horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT). Aeroacoustics numerical data is also compared with experimental data for subsonic jets at free-stream and cross-flow conditions showing the flexibility of tools and capabilities at CPAERO.v