This is 4 years late, but kerosene and baby powder that you just paint on and run the fan with the body at the AOA in question. Paint your wings black and you can see exactly how your airflow behaves when the kerosene evaporates and leaves behind the baby powder. You can get very advanced by mounting through the front and rear of your view port with your mounting surface floating between two panels. You can suspend these floating panels on load cells and get some really good data. If you make your floating panels round you can get a complete plot of lift to drag at pressure and speed at different AOA by letting ms excel draw up some graphs for you with the data you capture with your loadcells. You can also print your honeycomb structure and have your smoke tubes extending straight out of that, or mount your wing vertically and introduce the smoke through the leading edge of the airfoil through tiny holes, makes for some great viewing. I mean yours was already built, but just some ideas for anyone else that might want to experiment with building one.

I built a very rudimentary wind tunnel a few years ago; did what I was hoping to visualize which was vortices. I planned on building a better one and finally I'm biting the bullet. I'm also planning to use a radiator fan (16"). For my vapor it's going to go through the wings and exit out their tips in a specific location. Which means the connection to the wing and what allows the vapor to exit through is the same thing. I built my wings in the past out of cardstock which means I could create designated channels in the wing to direct the vapor itself to the tip. Worked perfectly. For the test section it's going to be 10x10"x3' length. All out of plexiglass. I'm thinking of painting the bottom and back side in vanta black for obvious reasons.

Boooom finally breathtaking results

Really impressed with how you researched the subject and turned that research into something that works so well! Well done, and thanks for sharing all the details of your work.

It’s great to see the process of development! Thanks!

Impressive results! You can change the bottom (and every surface for that matter) surface to black so it does not reflect light all over the place. Another trick would be to push the back surface further back if this is not messing with the function of your design so it does not getting any light (total black). Thank you for sharing!

Reynolds numbers are fascinating. I read research once that because of Reynolds numbers, insects don’t really fly in air, for them it’s more like swimming in water. And another article on the hypersonic wind tunnel that NASA runs at Goddard SFC (I think). They do it with air pressure like you said. It runs at something like 10atm and then has a 10:1 reduction to get to hypersonic speeds. The air tank is the size of a water tower and it can run for around 8 minutes. Wild.

I love this! I built a small wind tunnel for fun a while back and am working on 2 more for rockets with things I learned ! This video gave me some good ideas too! I totally understand the challenge of setting lights at specific angles to get the smoke to be visible and cutting all those straws in the last video 😂😂😂😂. I used a 3D printer to print the air laminator this time instead of cutting straws though wjich saved a lot of work.

wow thank you so much, im doing a project for my IB diploma course and wanted to make a wind tunnel and this video proved most helpful :) please continue making more, would love to see your work often

Amazing work Shawn! Very Informative and entertaining...I'm sorry I'm late watching these!!

We need hats Shawn! Thank you!

Really interesting, thanks for the video. Got wondering about wind tunnel, and to see your build along with basic science behind it was great. I've been wondering about trailer drag and its wind resistance. Air doesn't scale, after you said it, that should be obvious. But never thought about it, so didn't hadn't taken that into consideration if was building a model. Thanks, have whole new set of things to wrap my head around

Nice video. Good luck from India

This is great. You have out so much effort into the project and really explained how things work and why. Can’t wait for part three. I am hoping to build one for my school where I work so we can do some aerodynamic visualisations for CO2 race car designs.

Wow, incredible work getting to where you are!! Thanks for sharing this project!!! Something I thought about seeing when you got it working was where are the elevons that cause the pitch?? Because I would love to see the cause and effect of them .... Just a thought.... Thanks again for sharing, I just watched all of the Knowledge Series back to back :)

fantastic project!!

Cool video!

That is the best guide I've ever seen out there! Thank you soo much! :D When will be video 3 out? Is there resources (for impatient people like me 😂) you recommend for to read?

I’m looking to build a wind tunnel to test out the aero dynamics of RC car Bodies for different types of racing. I’m mainly into drag racing as it’s popularity has went off the charts. Trying to understand all of this is hard on my old man brain. Math isn’t my friend either. I want to figure out a way to measure down force, drag, and lift on these bodies to determine which are best for the specific type of racing. I’m going to be mainly doing 1/10 and 1/8 scale racing. In drag racing the bodies are limited right now, so being able to make adjustments to the bodies to gain better aerodynamics which would lead to faster speeds and/or lower et’s. Any help or advice you could lend me in the building process or point me in the direction of sensors or programs that would measure downforce, drag, and lift without taking out a second mortgage, would be greatly appreciated.

I suggest you move the PVC manifold to the outside

Great video - thanks very much! Have you had a chance to see if the fan is really delivering 2000cfm? That is, do you get 2000 fpm or 33 mph in your 1 sqft test section?

Great build. Can you share the wind speeds you were able to achieve with the 12V fan?

Great work but i think you have the wood wing upside down

Hello, I would like to know the useful section of the tunnel, and the diameter of the copper tubes that you used. Thank you. Great job!!!!

hey - did you ever finish part 3? been over a year? loved the series so far.

Hi, you said you'll work on 2 axis mechanism to measure lift and drag... I think you forgot to upload the video PS: I really need your help in this... I'm working on the same project

Great work! What fan did you purchase to use in the wind tunnel?

i luv u

Hi can you explain a bit how you did the smoke generator. Because i tried to do it but it failed do to the heat of the fog machine

How did you setup and concentrate the smoke from the fog machine and flow it into the tube?

Great job. Is part 3 done. I cant find it

Hasn’t it been a year by now? 😳

Hi! Quick question, is there an alternative to visualize laminar without using a smoke generator? One that is hopefully more affordable?

Sir how to find the wind tunnel design calculations if we want to do another size

I'm confused. Why aren't you seeing upwash? I was led to believe that should be on an easily visible scale *confused*

12:45 Could I please have the 3d printing model you used for bringing the smoke into the testing chamber?

1 year later...

When is the part 3 coming

Hi, i´m an Aeronautical Engineering estudent, and im building my own wind tunnel as a personal project but i'm having some trouble with finding the correct compression ratio, can someone throw some light over me and show the right path, pleaseeee!!!