Development of the High-pressure Smoke Visualization and Its Verification at Low Reynolds Number

Abstract

An improved smoke-flow visualization system driven by high-pressure air was developed in this study. The main motivation was due to it is hard to visualize local flow field via traditional smoke-flow method in the past. The developed system processes highly practicality and convenience for user. Many devices were constructed on the system including regulator for fine tuning, smoke generator with remote controller and a funnel-shape device inside the chamber to converge output flow. Preliminary results indicate the output smoke flow is laminar which can deduce the influence on the flow field. And the system will not be affected by pressure drop caused by air compressor, so it can export stable and continuously smoke for visualization. The prototype system was tested in three flow fields with different length scale at low Reynolds number. They were synthetic jet actuator, tip-vortex of delta wing and high-lift wing for task-based UAS. Those results not only show very good feasibility but also shown well suitability quality. In the future, present system will be applied to other kind of flow field to enhance the academic value and also be improved simultaneously.