Hello, my name is Dr. David Soper and I'm
a lecturer here at the University of Birmingham
in Vehicle Aerodynamics and today I'd like
to show you around the TRAIN rig facility.
OK, so another type of facility that we have
is called a moving model facility, and here
at the University of Birmingham we have the
TRAIN rig facility.
And essentially the way these work is we have
a series of model vehicles or an aircraft
wing which actually move along the track.
Now we're able to fire these vehicles at up
to 80 m/s, so around about a hundred and seventy
five miles an hour, down a 150 metres on track,
which can then be used to measure the aerodynamic
flows around these vehicles, or the pressures
on the vehicles themselves as they move along
the tracks to work out the forces.
Now, what's great about these facilities is
the fact that they're able to replicate the
relative motion between the moving vehicle
and the static ground correctly, whereas clearly
in a wind tunnel, we have a static model and
for the most part, a static ground or maybe
a moving ground, so our frame of reference
is the wrong way round.
So the beauty of a moving model facility,
is we're able to actually get this correct,
which allows us to set up things like vehicles
passing through tunnels, vehicles passing
through different types of infrastructure,
or vehicles passing through a crosswind generator
to set up these flows correctly.
There will be plenty of opportunities throughout
your time here at the University of Birmingham
to learn about the TRAIN rig facility and
the novel cutting edge research we are conducting
here.
This stems right from learning about the fundamentals
of fluid dynamics in the first year through
to our fourth year module, wind engineering
and bluff body aerodynamics.
There is also the opportunity to directly
engage with and conduct experiments at the
facility in your final year projects.
