California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Aerospace Engineering Department

Elliptical Wing Subsonic Closed-Circuit Wind Tunnel Test

In this course students will perform anexperiment that will involve a team of students working together to perform the experiment and complete the test report. The experiment will be performed and documented by teams comprised of 5 class members. Each team will have an appointed or elected team leader. The product of the experiment will be a technical report co-written by all of the members of each team.

The experiment involves learning how to run the department’s closed-circuit, subsonic wind tunnel to take data on an elliptical wing model. This experiment provides practical, hands-on experience with the wind tunnel and applies and reinforces the concepts of airspeed, dynamic pressure, angle of attack, and lift/drag coefficients learned during the course lectures, quizzes, and exams. All teams will take data for the model over a series of 7 distinct angles of attack. However, each team will be assigned a different airspeed at which they will run their angle of attack sweep. The full set of data across all airspeeds and angles of attack are to be used by all teams in compiling their report.

The project report produced by each team will be 20 % of your ARO 101 quarter grade (see breakdown of scoring at the end of these instructions). The team report will consist of the topics in the project test report template which can be downloaded from a link on the course home page. This template uses Microsoft Word, 12 point Times new Roman font, single space and allows you to integrate figures and tables into the text right after they are referenced. The templatealso includes pre-formatted “heading styles” that allow automatic generation of the Table of Contents.The report that each team turns in must exactly follow the headings and heading numbers provided in the template. You can make data tables and plot the test data using Microsoft Excel and import the data tables and plots into the Word document. You can also take digital photographs of the wind tunnel (as well as a photo of the team members for the title page) and import them into the Word document. Learning how to usethe MS Word “captions” feature for labeling table and figure numbers will allow for automatic construction and update of your List of Figures and List of Tables.Each teamshall deliver a bound, color copy of your team report to the instructor by the end of classon Wednesday before the Thanksgiving holiday. This permits the instructor to grade your report and inform you of your grade by the time the class takes the course final.

The team leader should assign which section of the report will be written by which team member. It is suggested that the team leader write the Executive summary, and be responsible for combining all sections into the final report.All figures must have figure numbers with a figure title under the figure, and table numbers with a table title above the table. The figure and table numbers will start with the section number and followed by a dash followed by the figure or table number (ex.: “Figure 4.2-1”), then the title. Learning to use the “captions” feature in MS Word, as suggested above, will make this much easier for you not only in this course, but for all course projects in your aerospace engineering classes. All external report or book references must be referred to by a reference number in the text of the report and listed in section 8.0.

Here is the breakdown of the 20 points possible for the project test report:

Cover Page / ALL elements identified in the template must be present. / 1 Point
Table of Contents, List of Figures, List of Tables / Automatically linked using “caption” features. Make sure you update page numbers as last thing before you print it out. / 1 Point
Executive Summary / NEVER more than 1 full page! One table or 1 figure with most important results. / 2 Points
Objectives / Both experimental and learning objectives. Tie the experiment to concepts we learned about in lecture. / 2 Points
Approach / Theory should be only the theory behind the experiments. Approach should describe, in general, how the experiment will work (not a full, step by step procedure, that comes in the next section) / 2 Points
Test Setup & Procedures / Describe each facility used for each experiment. Then provide step-by-step procedures in the table format provided. This should be completed BEFORE the test event and ready for you to use as a script on test day. / 3 Points
Test Article / Describe the articles that were being tested in each experiment. / 2 Points
Test Data Results & Interpretation / This is where you present your compiled results (engineers prefer figures and graphs, but tables can also be useful) and describe how you interpret these results with respect to the approach and theory you provided earlier. This is also where you should discuss and identify potential sources of experimental error (estimate how accurately you could read an instrument, or how accurately the pilot could hold the prescribed flight course) / 3 Points
Conclusions & Recommendations / State the conclusions that are directly supported by the data, and that reflect the objectives you stated earlier. This is also where you admit where you might not have executed the experiment in an ideal manner. Where is there room for improvement (in both the facility setup, test procedures, and your execution of those procedures) if this experiment were to be performed again? / 3 Points
References & Raw Data Sheets / List ANY and ALL references you used to produce this report or perform the experiments. If you used any websites (e.g. to find the elevation of certain points on campus, you may have used a CPP physical plant website), then cite them and what the website provided as far as information that you used. Better to cite more references than not enough! / 1 Point
TOTAL / 20 Points

ARO 101LFall 2015