SHAPE OPTIMIZATION OF SUPERSONIC WIND TUNNEL DIFFUSER USING GENETIC ALGORITHM

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Abstract

Wind tunnel, as an experimental laboratory, has many applications nowadays. Installation of wind tunnel is very expensive, so designers try to reduce wind tunnel’s installation and test costs by optimizing the design of various components of the wind tunnel. In this paper, costs are reduced and efficiency is increased due to a new design and optimization of a wind tunnel diffuser. In many supersonic wind tunnels, the convergent parts of the diffuser have walls with fixed slope. So, a new model of the supersonic wind tunnel diffuser is presented. This model of diffuser includes a flexible wall and three jacks in its direction. Then the two-dimensional and compressible flow was analyzed using k-w SST turbulence model and AUSM+ method in a supersonic wind tunnel. Finally, in Mach 4 and by the use of genetic algorithm, a new model of supersonic wind tunnel diffuser was optimized with the lowest overall pressure drop. For practical investigation the sample of supersonic wind tunnel diffuser of Ghadr Aerodynamic Research Center has been used. The results indicate that the new optimized wind tunnel has higher efficiency with 83 percent in comparison to Ghadr Center’s sample of supersonic wind tunnel.

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