Flow Over Cylinder: A Comprehensive Undergraduate Laboratory Experience

This work presents the development efforts for flow over cylinder experiment to provide undergraduate students with a comprehensive laboratory experience. To supplement the experimental efforts, analytical and computational approaches are also introduced. Specifically, the analysis focuses on wall pressure distribution, drag coefficient with confinement effect correction, boundary layer edge velocity and identifying the point of flow separation. This laboratory study is designed to deepen students’ understanding of fundamental principles governing viscous fluid flow, while introducing them to standard experimental techniques commonly employed in aerospace engineering. The discussions presented herein can serve as a practical laboratory manual for conducting the experiment in a university setting. Additionally, the student evaluation strategies and anticipated learning outcomes implemented at the University of Texas at Arlington are examined.