The Design of an Accurate Data Collection System to Measure Lift-to-Drag Ratios in Small-Scale Wind Tunnels

Overview

The Design of an Accurate Data Collection System to Measure Lift-to-Drag Ratios in Small-Scale Wind Tunnels Project H50 Ashley Rylander The ability to collect accurate data from wind tunnel experiments is critical to understanding the effectiveness of an airfoil. However, large industrial wind tunnels are hard and expensive to use. This issue can be solved by creating a system to accurately measure lift and drag in small-scale “hobbyist” wind tunnels. Such a device allows students and researchers to collect quantitative aerodynamics data from their own physical experiments, enabling both deeper aerodynamics education and research. The design of the system includes two load cells, one each for lift and drag. Via a mounting bracket and calibration, the system measured the lift and drag forces experienced by three different airfoils at five different angles of attack inside the wind tunnel. The data collected was used to find the lift-to-drag ratios (a measure of efficiency) for each airfoil. These values were then compared to XFLR5 simulations of the same environment in order to determine the accuracy of the load cell system. The mean average percent error between the predicted vs. measured lift-to-drag ratios was 54%, with a standard deviation of 42%. This system worked well to compare different airfoil shapes and explore overall trends, demonstrating that a low cost force balance can generate usable results and generally adhere to the curves produced by 3D simulations. However, this project also highlighted the challenges of data collection from small-scale wind tunnels. The behavior of air at low wind speeds is difficult to simulate and measure, explaining the divergence between the predicted and actual lift-to-drag ratios.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Applied Mechanics (Senior Division) · Entry S-02-10

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