Design and Fabrication of Portable Smoke Tunnel for Flow Visualization

A smoke tunnel design and fabrication is one of the improvement efforts to facilitate the
flow visualization for the transparent fluid such as air and water to be visible. The field
study of fluid kinematics such as the investigation over immersed model at different
Reynolds Numbers and the complexity of flow characteristic when moving or static bodies
or structure through a moving fluid also will be takes into consideration. However, wind
tunnel and smoke generator which are available in UTP Fluid Mechanics laboratory are not
exactly practical to visualizing the air flow pattern appropriately. The methodology of
designing and fabricating of the smoke tunnel has been made based on the literature review
on previous works or studies. The feasibility study also has been performed for selecting
materials which are available in market with cost effective and effortless for construction.
The smoke tunnel has been designed based on analysis on air blower characteristics
followed by the diffuser length, the test-section cross section area, the contraction cone
length, the setting chamber radius inlet, and smoke generator’s tubing. The total length of
this tunnel is about 1.6 meters with square test section 0.12 x 0.12 m providing maximum
free stream velocity of 23 m/s. The details drawing of the smoke tunnel will be provided
through CATIA software for two dimension and three dimension outlines. The design
criteria will try to create a good matching between the smoke and the surrounding air flow
field by minimizing the difference in the two fluids velocities.