The wind tunnel at IIT Madras
Campus Facilities , Academic Facilities
In the 1960s, the Applied Mechanics Department of IIT Madras had a wind tunnel among its facilities. German technicians came to the Institute to assemble the tunnel which became functional in the late 1960s. It was used for industry work (smoke nuisance) and laboratory work for a few years. The wind tunnel was eventually dismantled some decades after it was put up.
The Applied Mechanics Department report published in Annual Report of IIT Madras 1969-70 notes that “The Wind Tunnel erection work including the calibration of the six component balance was completed.” According to a retired professor from the Department of Applied Mechanics, the wind tunnel was a Göttingen-type wind tunnel and the six component balance was provided to measure all the “three components of forces and movements.”
The platform placed above the tunnel supported the electro-mechanical equipment that was used in the tests. Interestingly, these wind tunnels could be much smaller (table top sized) or much larger (large enough to test a full sized car in).
Prof. Santhakumar Sundaram (Aeronautical Engineering Department) notes that he used to see parts of the wind tunnel lying outside the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory before it was assembled by the Germans. This was in the mid 1960s. “I have, as a student, seen some large steel shells like nozzle, collector, diffuser lying in the sun and rain just outside the large shutter of the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory just across the road from the Aeronautical Engineering Department.”
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