Last month, the low speed wind tunnel (LST-1@DME) that has been under-development at DME for the past few years came alive once again, after a long hiatus— working on it a group of undergraduate students along with their mentor who’d recently traveled back from the US to install a novel data acquisition and flow visualization system in the tunnel.
Mr. Lokesh Silwal is a 2016 BE Mechanical graduate of DME, currently pursuing his postgraduate research studies at Auburn University. An experimental aerodynamicist by research, Lokesh has been working on experimental methods for characteristic measurement and analysis of rotorcraft blades, among other streams. His wider interest eventually led him to seek technology transfer from his lab to DME, and induce future collaborations that hold the potential of creating a major impact in the field in Nepal.
Student team: Saman Dhakal, Yubaraj Kawar, and Yugal Shrestha.
The team installed, tested and validated a range of systems in the tunnel that has pushed forward the experimental and instrumentation capabilities at DME, and will pave the way for future projects and collaborations. The tunnel is the first operating wind tunnel in Nepal, and it will create opportunities for future developments of larger and better systems in the country. The details on its operational specifications can be found here.
The faculty of aerospace engineering will actively seek to develop the current experimental systems- complemented by its continuing pursuit of numerical tools and techniques- and add additional facilities through internal projects as well as collaborations with its partners. It welcomes ideas and discussions for collaborations/linkage projects from all interested academic and non-academic bodies.
The team is grateful to Mr. Laim P. McQuellin of UNSW@ADFA for providing the NI DAQ system that was vital to this project. We acknowledge the support from the DME HOD Dr. Nawraj Bhattarai and Dy. HODs Hari Bahadur Dura and Sanjay Neupane, and other faculty members.