IMPROVEMENT OF SMOKE RAKES AND THE IMAGE PROCESSING FOR THE FLOW VISUALIZATION EXPERIMENTSGokcen Jurnal, Cihad Kose, Cem Kolbakir, Ahmet Selim Durna and Burak Karadag Flow visualization is a commonly used technique to examine aerodynamic characteristics of a body. In this brief study, an improvement made to the smoke rake system of a commercial open-circuit vertical wind tunnel is presented. The improved smoke rake system decreases smoke line thickness from its nominal value of 3 mm to 1.5 mm and increases the number of smoke lines from its nominal value of 25 up to 91. Flow patterns around a 3D-printed NACA 4412 airfoil model are photographed, and the digital images are processed using filters. The results demonstrate a clear enhancement of the streak line visualization compared to that of the original smoke rake system. |