A wind tunnel built by former Lethbridge College students for their Capstone Project. (Photo: ASET)

By Justin Goulet

Wind tunnel project earns provincial award nomination for former Lethbridge College team

Sep 28, 2023 | 10:48 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – A former team of Lethbridge College students have received recognition for their work in the classroom.

Former engineering design and drafting technology (EDDT) students Willy Peters, Peter Harris, Nicolas Groenheide, and Julian Krizan worked together to answer the question, ‘is a computer software program as effective as a wind tunnel when testing air flow around an object?’ as their Capstone Project.

Their project has been recognized as a finalist for the Capstone Project of the Year Award.

The honour is distributed in Alberta by the Association of Science and Engineering Technology Professionals of Alberta (ASET).

The former college students compared testing air flow in an actual wind tunnel to employing a digital means, namely computational fluid dynamics, also known as CFD.

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CFD software creates virtual simulations to predict how liquids and gases will perform. For this project, the teammates used air flow instead of fluids, while applying the same principles.

To accomplish this, the crew built a wind tunnel for the physical testing part of the project. They put an object inside it and gathered information on how air flow behaved around the object. The team also recorded and assessed how the profile of the object impacted wind speed.

After this, they proceeded to the CFD part of the testing and recreated the dimensions of the wind tunnel with CFD software in order to run virtual simulations. While analyzing the results, the team discovered that the visuals of the wind tunnel and CFD simulation were similar.

However, the CFD simulation was able to clearly represent the specific behaviour of how air travelled in certain areas of the tunnel. The team ultimately found that the CFD software can accurately produce a virtual model of the wind tunnel.

Willy Peters said, “In addition to learning that we could successfully recreate a wind tunnel with CFD software, we found that the software was able to compensate for variables that could not be measured during physical tests, such as pressure.”

Meanwhile, ASET CEO Barry Cavanaugh stated, “This Capstone Project represents the kind of out of the box thinking that characterizes the engineering technology profession, and in this case it’s literal.”

The team’s project is one of nine finalists for the 2023 ASET Capstone Project of the Year Award. The winning project will be named at the end of October.

READ MORE: Former Lethbridge College team named as finalists for Capstone Project of the Year Award

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