Predicting the Structural Response Induced by Turbulent Boundary Layer in Wind Tunnel

Abstract

A new attempt to measure the structure response generated by a turbulent boundary layer in a wind tunnel is proposed in this paper. To develop a scaling procedure that accommodates both the structural vibration and turbulent boundary-layer excitation for predicting the vibration response of a structure using a scaled model in a wind tunnel, a receptance method is used to extend the scaling procedure to a curved plate. Because the scaling equations are developed for a simply supported boundary and a clamped boundary, a modal analysis is used to confirm that the scaling equations are also applicable to a plate with unsupported boundary conditions. The characteristic parameters of the structural vibrations and the flow parameters for a full-scale object are both scaled. In addition, the scaling procedures consider the effects of the material used in the scaled model in predicting the vibrations of the full-scale structure. The scaling procedures are developed from theoretical methods, and numerical techniques and wind-tunnel measurements are used to validate the scaling procedures. The structural vibrations of a full-scale body are compared with the results obtained using the scaling procedure and the response of a scaled model to verify that the scaling procedures developed in this study are effective for predicting the structural response of full-scale bodies from wind-tunnel test data.