A Supersonic Water Table for Rapid Turbine Prototyping

Testing new designs for jet engine turbines is no walk in the park, but Purdue University researchers have come up with a solution: A water table that simulates supersonic flow. Watch this video to see how the team creates 2D representations of an airfoil, puts them in the water, instantly sees the results, and then uses that analysis to refine the airfoil design.

“We can now easily experiment with different geometries for turbine blades,” said Guillermo Paniagua  , Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose research at Zucrow Labs focuses on turbines and propulsion. “We create 2D representations of an airfoil, put them in the water, instantly see the results, and then use that analysis to refine the airfoil design.”

Transcript

00:00:00 I had worked as an intern for an aerospace  company, and I realized after my internship   I wanted something different. I recognized that  here at Purdue we have Zucrow Labs. Zucrow is   the world's largest propulsion lab. The research  going on here is some of the best in the world.   The first professor I knew that came to my  mind and that was Dr. Paniagua. He wanted   me to build a facility that uses water to model  hypersonic, supersonic, and transonic gas flow.   What is being put in the water is a 2D geometry.  So the way we can better design turbine blades,   turbine airfoils for example, is by taking a 2D  cut of that geometry and analyzing it, modeling   it, and using computational tools, and now testing  it in the water table to both gather qualitative   and quantitative data of that geometry. In  comparison to wind tunnels, the water table,   you have an ability to test quickly and rapidly.  We can 3D-print geometries and rapidly iterate  

00:01:15 those geometries in the design phase. Imagine  that you are somewhere in another country.   You send me at Zucrow the part file. I 3D-print  it. I put it in the water table. And I give you   experimental results that you can use to validate  your computational tools. That is the vision for   this facility. For me, it has opened my  eyes to the great things we do at Purdue.