This week, the team returned from the winter break, recharged and ready to continue making progress! For the spring semester, the team split into two sub-teams – one focused on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and another focused on manufacturing and testing. This decision was made to simultaneously further progress on the two primary tasks: theoretical simulations and analytical testing.

The CFD team began with a meeting to establish a process for accessing the remote UF supercomputer, “HiPerGator”, and for setting up simulations within Ansys. Stay tuned for more progress to come as the team gets working on the first simulations of the spring semester!

The manufacturing and testing sub-team got started with inspecting and measuring our stock, seen below. Following this, some of the stock was taken to one of the manufacturing spaces where the team cut the stock into smaller sections with the bandsaw. After more machining, these smaller sections will become the interchangeable plates used for wind tunnel testing!