Capabilities

Fluids

  • Modular flow bench:
    • syringe, peristaltic, and gear pumps
      • Cole-Parmer 2×2 syringe pump, WZ-74905-39
      • Cole-Parmer Masterflex L/S Digital Drive, peristaltic pump, 0.001 – 3400 ml/min
      • Cole-Parmer Digital Gear Pump, 1 – 4200 ml/min (low and high flow rate pump heads available)
    • able to create steady state and low frequency oscillating volume flow from 0.001 up to 4200 ml/min
    • closed loop system with pressure pulse damping (to be built)
    • temperature control by inline and bath thermostat, Cole-Parmer Polystat Standard 6L Heat/Cool Bath, -20 to 100C
  • Pressure measurement and pressure drop characterisation for internal flow components
  • Bench top laser enclosure, 3x1x1.5m working volume with modular optical bench/flow bench setup inside
  • Laser visualisation of internal flow (in transparent phantoms).
  • Stereoscopic PIV measurement of internal flows in rigid and flexible structures
    • LaVision PIV system
    • 2x ProSX 5M camera, 12bit 2448×2050 px, 14.2fps @ full resolution > 15 fps @ 4M resolution, Scheimpflug system
    • Litron 135mJ, 15Hz double pulse, dual cavity Nd:YAG laser system with line generator optics
  • Design of validation experiments for fluid flow and fluid-structure interaction
  • Simulation capability for parameterisation and qualification of experiment design

Solids

  • 3D DIC system using dual 5MP cameras capable of resolving surface displacements and deformations on 3D objects
  • 5 x 2D DIC systems for routine measurement of displacement and deformation in the plane of a surface
  • Modular loading capability for deformation of small scale lightweight structures
  • Bulge testing of thin polymer sheets for mechanical characterisation

Fluid Structure Interaction

  • Integrated and simultaneous measurement of strain and flow field in flexible structures (to be developed).

Compute Cluster

  • Small scale beowulf cluster, 6 nodes
  • 4 core dual thread intel i7, 16GB, per node
  • Linux CentOS 7.4, warewulf cluster management
  • SLURM load management
  • ANSYS, OpenFOAM, Palabos
  • full GNU development suite, GCC5, GCC7, MPI (mpich and openmpi)