Investigate the drag forces produced at the turbulent boundary layers in a moving aircraft
Learn how a wind tunnel is used to investigate the drag forces that are produced at turbulent boundary layers.
© University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
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Transcript
ANNIE RAHILLY: What if we could catch the wind, or calm the seas? Impossible, it might be. But engineers at the University of Melbourne are researching to understand nature and how to work in harmony with powerful forces. Here in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, people have been studying turbulence in the air and the ocean for over 50 years.
NICHOLAS HUTCHINS: We're researching turbulent boundary layers because whenever an aircraft moves through air, it's surrounded by this thin region of highly turbulent and chaotic flow. And that very thin region that envelops the aircraft causes a great deal of the drag acting on that aircraft. Half of the fuel burned by the engines on an aircraft is used to overcome that drag, just due to that thin layer of turbulent fluid that envelops the aircraft.
If we can understand or we can control these thin layers of fluid, there's this possibility that we can reduce the fuel bill of the world's airline fleet.
NICHOLAS HUTCHINS: We're researching turbulent boundary layers because whenever an aircraft moves through air, it's surrounded by this thin region of highly turbulent and chaotic flow. And that very thin region that envelops the aircraft causes a great deal of the drag acting on that aircraft. Half of the fuel burned by the engines on an aircraft is used to overcome that drag, just due to that thin layer of turbulent fluid that envelops the aircraft.
If we can understand or we can control these thin layers of fluid, there's this possibility that we can reduce the fuel bill of the world's airline fleet.