Aerodynamics Lab-I

Director: Dr. Salah Hafez

Purpose:   This laboratory is dedicated to research purposes by our staff, research students and senior students in their final year project and assignments. A low-speed wind tunnel and cavitations/flow visualization water tunnel are the main test facilities within the laboratory and can be utilized in a wide range of applications. The low-speed wind tunnel is suited for instrument calibration, bluff body aerodynamics, airfoil testing, vehicle aerodynamics, wind engineering studies. The water tunnel can serve specialized area of cavitations studies, hydrofoils and propellers testing flow visualizations and hydrodynamics of under-water vehicles.

Courses and Enrollment:

AE 311             Incompressible Aerodynamics

AE 413             Viscous Aerodynamics

AE 414             Aerodynamics Lab

AE 499             Senior Project

Graduate Courses

Location: Building 43 ground floor

Area:   120 m²

Existing Stations & Major equipment:

1. Low-speed subsonic wind tunnel, 50cm x 70cm – 50m/s with Sensitive 6-component high frequency force transducer for time history load measurements, a  3-component static force balance , electronic multiple channel low-range pressure scanning system, multi-channel hot-wire and hot film anemometry for wind speed and turbulence measurements.
2. Cavitations/flow visualization water tunnel, 30 cm x 30cm – 6m/s with PIV system for 2-D and stereoscopic velocity, electronic multiple channel low-range pressure scanning system, multi-channel hot film anemometry for water speed and turbulence measurements, flow visualization facilities including multiple dye injection ports and portable mini LASER tube.

Aerodynamics Lab-II

Director: Dr. Salah Hafez

Purpose: To provide students with experiments in basic flow measurements and visualization. These measurements include pressure distribution on cylinder and airfoils, lift and drag measurements of wings and other aerodynamics bodies, boundary layer measurements and the use of normal hot-wire anemometer. Flow visualization includes study the flow pattern around streamlined and bluff bodies.

Courses and Enrollment:

AE 311             Incompressible Aerodynamics

AE 413             Viscous Aerodynamics

AE 414             Aerodynamics Lab

Location: Building 43 first floor

Area:   120 m²

Existing Stations & Major equipment:

Aerodynamics Lab-III

Director: Dr. Khalid A. Al-Juhany

Purpose: Supersonic test facility dedicated to research purposes by our staff, research students and senior students in their final year project and assignments. This facility can be used for the study of slender body aerodynamics and airfoil testing at supersonic flow condition. Measurements include direct force and moment, velocity fields, surface pressure and temperature distribution.  Strain gauge force balances can be calibrated using a balance calibration rig.

Courses and Enrollment:

AE 412             Compressible Flow

AE 414             Aerodynamics Lab

AE 499             Senior Project

Graduate Courses

Location: Building 106- ground floor

Area:   576 m²

Existing Stations & Major equipment:

Ludwieg tube wind tunnel with axi-symmetric test section, 240 mm diameter - Mach number up to 5, equipped with sensitive internal 6-component high frequency force balance, high-speed Stereoscopic PIV system (LaVision), electronic multiple channel low-range pressure scanning system, Dantec Dynamic Multi-channel hot-wire system and balance calibration rig.

Structures Lab

Director: Eng. M. Alharbi

Purpose: To provide students with experiments that supplement teaching courses in teaching both undergraduate and graduate level aerospace structures classes in addition for research work in the area of light weight structures.  

Courses and Enrollment:

AE 331             Aircraft Structures I

AE 432             Aircraft Structures II

AE 434             Structures Lab

AE 499             Senior Project

Graduate Courses

Location: Building 43 first floor

Area:   20 m²

Existing Stations & Major equipment:

Laboratory work centered on various experiments that can be assembled and mounted on mobile frames.  The equipment in this lab is used to test structures and components typical of those found in aircraft and spacecraft.  Various experiments are available to investigate bending, determination of shear center, principal axes, buckling of thin-walled open sections. Standard weights, dial indicators and sections of different shapes and known mechanical properties are used during these experiments

Computers Lab

Director: Dr. Ibraheem Al-Qadi

Purpose: to provide students with access to computers and software packages necessary for class instructions and assignment related activities.

Courses and Enrollment:

All AE courses

Location: Building 42-B- first floor

Area:   50 m²

Existing Stations & Major equipment:  

The students’ lab consists of ten hi-end desktop computers (Intel Core Duo with 1GB memory). Additionally, there are two desktop computers dedicated for internet access.  Every computer is loaded with all software packages needed for course instruction and research. The PCs in the computer lab and offices are replaced every two years.

Computational Fluid Dynamics Lab

Director: Dr. Ibraheem Al-Qadi

Purpose: The department owns state of the art supercomputing facility that is considered one of the fastest supercomputers in Saudi Arabia. It provides users the chance to investigate complex fluid flow problems and analyze data sets relevant to PIV measurements.

Courses and Enrollment:

AE 492             Computer Applications in AE

AE 499             Senior Project

Graduate Courses

Location: Building 106- ground floor

Area:   42 m²

Existing Stations & Major equipment: 

A supercomputer system consists of a 32-nodes (64 Opteron CPUs - 128 cores) Linux cluster and a (2 Opteron CPUs - 4 cores) master node plus a storage node with 4 Terabyte of disk-space. The system is connected to a number of hi-end workstations for pre and post processing.