Development of Aerodynamic Research at the National Center for Mechatronics and Clean Technologies

This work describes the activities of the National Center for Mechatronics and Clean Technologies (NCMCT) on all efforts dedicated to the development of capacity for both experimental and numerical aerodynamic research aimed at solving academic and industrial problems. After a nearly three decade period of low investment and breakdowns in the institutional policies in the education by the Bulgarian government, in the last five years it become possible to build a medium-sized low-speed wind tunnel, as well as design and build various stands for laboratory and open field propeller testing. The main research activities were focused on the aviation and automotive sectors, and also on wind energy generation. Additionally, other research problems such as aerodynamic interactions of buildings and antennas, and drone noise are under development. Computational aerodynamics was given special attention in support of the experimental studies through the use of open source codes for the design of airfoils, rotor blades, propellers of drones and more complex flow-body simulations in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). There is increasing interaction with the local industry as well as research partnerships with other universities and research centers.