Critical water tunnel facility upgrade

通过这项提案，我们要求为滑铁卢大学（UW）水洞设施的关键，时间敏感的升级提供资金。该设施建于20世纪60年代，最后一次升级是在20世纪90年代，其性能下降严重阻碍了几个申请人正在进行的研究计划的进展。此外，它最初是为环境流动研究而设计的，具有不适合许多实际工程应用的低工作速度范围。申请人在实验流体力学方面有积极的研究计划，包括与工业合作伙伴在空气动力学，工业流体力学，生物力学和流体结构相互作用方面的合作。拟议的升级将解决阻碍这些地区目前项目的流动特性差的问题，并将大幅增加运行速度范围，扩大设施的能力范围。升级后的设施将是研究流体结构相互作用问题的理想选择-申请人合作进行的研究领域。这项研究的重点是从流体流动，流动引起的振动，以及人类语音的流体-结构相互作用的能量收集。 对现有水洞的拟议升级还将补充申请人实验室中现有的尖端流动测量设备，包括时间分辨粒子图像测速仪，这将使研究人员能够对上述问题中伴随的复杂非线性相互作用获得新的见解，这些问题对圆柱形部件和结构的设计和操作具有直接的实际应用，小规模的能量收集，以及用于个体外科手术的声带建模。所要求的设备将避免建造一个全新设施的需要，从而将总预算减少近一个数量级。该基础设施将被改造成一个多功能的研究设施，使申请人能够扩大他们的研究计划，产生新的研究成果，并促进与行业的合作研究机会，以增加实际影响。它将立即支持四名HQP（1名博士，2名硕士和1名博士后）的培训，并将显着扩大研究生和博士后水平的实验流体力学培训基地。这预计将创造新的培训机会，每年四个研究生和六个本科生，谁将获得直接相关的流体结构相互作用和相关的结构响应在大多数机械系统和土木结构，以及在人体中遇到的分析实验和分析技能。

Through this proposal, we request funds for a critical, time-sensitive upgrade of the water tunnel facility at the University of Waterloo (UW). Constructed in the 1960’s, the facility was last upgraded in the 1990’s, and its degraded performance is significantly hindering the progress of several of the applicants’ ongoing research programs. Additionally, it was originally designed for environmental flow studies, with a low operating velocity range unsuitable for many practical engineering applications. The applicants have active research programs in experimental fluid mechanics, including collaborations with industrial partners in aerodynamics, industrial fluid mechanics, biomechanics, and fluid structure interaction. The proposed upgrades will address the issues of poor flow characteristics that impede current projects in these areas, and will substantially increase the operating velocity range, extending the range of the capabilities of the facility. The upgraded facility will be ideal for studying fluid structure interaction problems - the area of research pursued collaboratively by the applicants. This research focuses on energy harvesting from fluid flows, flow-induced vibrations, and fluid-structure interactions of human speech. The proposed upgrade to the existing water tunnel will also complement the cutting-edge flow measurement equipment available in the applicants’ laboratories, including time-resolved particle image velocimetry, which will allow researchers to gain new insight into the complex non-linear interactions attendant in the aforementioned problems, which have direct practical applications to the design and operation of cylindrical components and structures, small-scale energy harvesting, and vocal folds modelling for individual surgical procedures. The requested equipment will prevent the need to construct a completely new facility, reducing the overall budget by almost an order of magnitude. The infrastructure will be converted into a versatile research facility that will enable the applicants to expand their research programs to produce novel research results and foster collaborative research opportunities with industry for added practical impact. It will immediately support training of four HQP (1 PhD, 2 MASc, and 1 postdoc), and will expand significantly the training base in experimental fluid mechanics at graduate and postdoctoral levels. This is expected to create new training opportunities to four graduate and six undergraduate students per year, who will acquire experimental and analytical skills directly relevant to the analysis of fluid-structure interaction and the associated structural response encountered in most mechanical systems and civil structures, as well as in human body.