Flow Field Modulator Enhancing Wind Engineering Research
Professor Jennifer Bridge describes the flow field modulator, a new piece of equipment at the facility that greatly enhances the capabilities of the BLWT. The FFM is a bank of 319 very fast, individually controlled fans that can simulate transient events like wind gusts, downbursts, and thunderstorm winds. It can also replay wind events (called time histories) with data collected in the field, for example by the UF\u2019s \u201cstorm chaser\u201d team and its mobile weather towers. The facility is unique in its scale. Bridge explains how the FFM opens up wind engineering research to many new questions, with many new possibilities for discovering how different wind profiles affect structures.