This project is for the development of an undergraduate laboratory in fluid mechanics to support the Mechanical Engineering Program. The grant provides the financial resources in order to purchase the following equipment: (1) wind tunnels with manometer packages, probe packages and accessories to investigate Bernoulli's equation, and laminar and turbulent boundary layers; (2) NACA0020 airfoil sections with nineteen pressure taps to investigate the stalling angle of airfoils; (3) hydraulic benches and accessories to be used to analyze venturi meters, flows through several different orifices, the impact of water jets; (4) piping systems with several different pipes and valves to calculate the energy losses present in such systems; (5) Reynolds number apparatuses to visualize laminar, transition, and turbulent flows; and (6) open water channels with accessories to investigate the hydraulic jump, flows over straight and vee notch weirs, and visualize flows around simple geometrical objects. The laboratory will be an integral part of the MECE 3315 Fluid Mechanics course which is required for all mechanical engineering majors. The laboratory illustrates the concepts covered in class. Its main emphasis and effort is placed on gaining information from the experiments, experiencing the trials and tribulations of experimentation and not simply demonstrating physical principles.
