Leilani Bender ’24

Major

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Project Title

Wind Tunnel Construction and Experimentation on Umbrella Forms

My project aimed to test the resilience of kinetic umbrellas to wind. The aims of this summer were to finish the construction of a wind tunnel, construct a balance to measure forces and compare preliminary results of wind testing on model kinetic umbrellas with the results from the University of Oviedo in Spain. We constructed the nozzle of the wind tunnel, connected its modular pieces and created and troubleshot the balance. Then, we tested the umbrella using different angles to compare the results obtained from the University of Oviedo, on a different sized wind tunnel. The most rewarding part of the internship was when the wind tunnel was finally turned on after many weeks of hard work.



Internship Year

2023

Project Category

Innovation and a New Energy Future

Organization(s)

Creative and Resilient Urban Engineering (CRUE) and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) Research Groups, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University - Princeton, New Jersey

Mentor(s)

Maria Garlock, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University; Branko Glisic, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University; Antonio Navarro-Manso, Associate Professor, University of Oviedo