Jaime Wong

This wind tunnel was designed to demonstrate concepts from thin airfoil theory, and includes cambered and uncambered airfoils (NACA 0012, 0024, 4412 and 4424), while making maximal use of 3D printed parts to both minimize costs and to share the files. The wind tunnel uses a cycloidal gear reduction for angle of attack adjustment, due to limitations on minimum feature size in FDM printing. In the folder linked above, in addition to the STL files required to print most of its parts, there is also a bill of additional materials (eg, threaded rod) required for its assembly, and basic instructions. It is meant to use a kitchen scale as its force sensor, which are available at low cost with reasonably accuracy (a precision of 0.1 gram is ideal for this wind tunnel).

This device can be used alone to generate various lift curves, or it can be used in conjunction with the ground effect / panel code software described elsewhere.