Have you ever wandered downstairs to the first floor of Dana Hall and seen some interesting pieces of equipment or machinery in the hallway?
Have you ever heard loud noises coming from their lab?
For the past two years, some students in the College of Engineering, Technology and Architecture have been working on a wind tunnel in the basement of Dana Hall.
After waiting a long time and trying to make their work picture perfect, they are finally able to unveil their work.
The students working on the project are using it to conduct research that will be useful in the aerospace industry.
The wind tunnel helps the team study the key aspects of aerodynamics.
With their research, they expect that it will help industries make jet engines’ turbines and blades more efficient.
Their findings will help companies save millions of dollars as well as give the students a broad understanding of aerodynamics which can help them lead to a career once they graduate.
Mark Markiewicz, the project leader, was nominated by CETA mechanical engineering professor Ivana Milanovic.
Mark impressed her with his analysis and supervisor skills.
Milanovic still looks over the project, but leaves Mark in charge to make daily decisions about the project.
He also is the go to person when it comes to making sure that everything is running correctly and smoothly.
Mark, a sophomore, joined the team as a freshman and has enjoyed taking part in the project ever since.
He says that he never has free time when it comes to working on the project and once he heard about the project, he didn’t hesitate to sign up.
“During my orientation for freshman year, Prof. Milanovic was banging the drums trying to drum up interest in her turbo-machinery project.
She talked about how we would be rebuilding the schools third wind tunnel.
So as soon as I got to school freshman year, I made sure to apply for the job,” says Mark.
Around his busy schedule and being a mechanical engineering major, he never hesitates to help out the team.
“To be very frank, it takes up pretty much all of my free time. I live and breathe the turbo lab outside of classes.
With that being said, I choose for it to take up all of my time because it’s engineering and I love engineering otherwise I wouldn’t do it,” Mark said.
Now that the wind tunnel is pretty much complete, their goal is to try and turn it on to see if it actually works.
After that, they will need to fix the pressure mapping mechanism in order to get any data out of the cascade so then they can validate the tunnel.
After that, the sky is the limit. The wind tunnel is modular so they can swap out the final test section for whatever they want. With using the set up that they have now, they could start testing new turbine blade designs in order to make more efficient turbine blades.
The turbine blades can be found everywhere.
“You have no idea how exciting this is,” says Mark when he was asked about how he feels about the project being complete.
The project is coming along and it will definitely help change the aerospace industry.
For anyone interested in joining the team, you can check out the bulletin boards in United Technologies Hall and Dana Hall as well as the CT Space Grant.
If you have an idea to share or are interested in a certain topic that you may want to learn more about, you can talk to a professor or your advisor.