Design and Implementation of Fan Array Wind Wall to Generate Different Types of Flows in an Urban Airspace.

The presence of roughness elements and urban canyons in an urban airspace serves as a hub for various unsteadiness in air flow. A Fan Array Wind Tunnel (FAWT) helps leverage these unsteady flows in a controlled and repeatable fashion with the manipulation of the flow speeds from individually controlled fans. In the present study, a modular 5 feet x 5 feet FAWT is developed using off the shelf 120 mm Digikey MS1238E fans positioned in a 12 X 12 grid and controlled with a Python based GUI designed to generate intermittent 1 D and 2 D gusts at various flow speeds. Preliminary experiments will be performed to characterize the flow from the fans. Additionally, the effects of screens on the turbulence statistics will be explored and manipulated to obtain the desired level of turbulence intensities for flows.