In 2007, RWDI opened its RWDI USA LLC office located in Miramar, Florida. This new 10,000 square-foot facility features a new state-of-the-art boundary layer wind tunnel and model shop supported by a skilled engineering and technical staff.
RWDI USA LLC’s wind tunnel is an important tool for investigating the effect of wind on architectural and civil engineering structures. This wind tunnel incorporates a long section, upwind of the study model testing area section, where the model is placed, where floor roughness and turbulence generators are present. This is to simulate the lower layer of the atmosphere and the natural drag of the Earth’s surface (i.e., vegetation, terrain, man-made objects) on the wind flowing over it. Within this atmospheric boundary layer, the mean wind speed generally increases with height until the top of the boundary layer is reached, at which point the surface drag no longer plays a role.
The wind tunnel was designed for the most commonly performed tests, including topographical model studies, cladding wind pressure tests, structural wind loads, aeroelastic building sway studies and speed comfort studies. It was designed using RWDI’s Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) team expertise and knowledge. Consisting of two (2) high volume 85 horsepower fans situated in an 8’ wide adjustable height (5.8’) section tunnel. The tunnel has an upwind fetch of 40 ft. and a top speed of 60 feet-per-second. Special features include an adjustable ceiling to control the pressure along the test-section, automated floor roughness, fully indexed turntable capable of 1/100th of a degree resolution, pressure transducers with 512 channels taking 600 simultaneous samples a second and a 3-axis strain gauge flexure force balance.
