Quote:
Originally Posted by kach22i
What kind of variations or errors will we see in a small wind tunnel that are not present at the large wind tunnel? Can these variations be corrected for and adjusted as with polling data?
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I think every single factor that is measurable will likely be in error. 'Low Speed Wind Tunnel Testing (Barlow/Rae/Pope) is the book to look at ('low speed', as in sub-sonic). It has a large number of chapters devoted to corrections.
Here's a key passage from that book relating to wind tunnel test section size:
So yes you can see from this that correction factors exist, but the recommendation (AFAIK) still remains at a max of 5 per cent blockage.
As I said, you can be sure if smaller, cheaper wind tunnels were fine, car manufacturers, race teams, etc, wouldn't have all built huge (and massively expensive) wind tunnels.