The Stokes Institute is located at the University of Limerick’s Engineering Research Building, a purpose-built facility with laboratories for research into heat transfer, fluid flow, aerodynamics phenomena. These laboratories are comprehensively equipped with test installations and measurement systems: a detailed list of facilities and equipment is presented below. In addition, Stokes has facilities for the development of sensors, instrumentation systems and test vehicles. Finally, Stokes currently utilises a number of codes for numerical analysis, including the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software FLUENT, FLOTHERM and Finite Element software ANSYS.

WIND TUNNELS AND FLOW RIGS

Low Speed Wind Tunnel (0 - 40 m/s)

Medium Speed Wind Tunnel (0 - 110m/s)

Transonic Cascade Tunnel (0 - 340 m/s)

FLOW MEASUREMENT

Dantec Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) system: full-field velocity measurement

Dantec Constant Temperature Anemometer (CTA) for hot-wires and hot-films

Furness FC012 and FC05010 Micromanometers (0 - 20 Pa and 0 - 200 Pa)

Barometric and Differential (0-2 bar) Druck DPI 260 Digital Pressure Indicators

Dantec Flow Visualisation Fog Generator

ENVIRONMENTAL TEST FACILITIES

Weiss Environmental Chamber

Weiss Temperature and Humidity Chamber

Mixed Flowing Gas Chamber

LDS726 Vibration System with Amplifier and Dactron Controller

Anatech STD128 Event Detector (Continuity Testing, 128 Channels)

Temperature-controlled Wind Tunnel (10 m/s velocity, ambient to +200ºC)

ARTIC 30 Temperature Forcing System (-40ºC to +130ºC temperature range)

TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT AND CALIBRATION EQUIPMENT

Flir Systems Merlin lnSb Thermal Camera with ThermaCAM Researcher Software

Minolta/LAND Cyclops 33 CF Hand-held Infra-Red Thermometer

Stanford Research Systems 16-Channel Temperature Loggers

Comark 6600 10-channel Microprocessor Thermometer

Comark C9001 Thermometers and C9011 Platinum Resistance Thermometer

Lauda RM6S Thermostatic Calibration Bath

Materials Characterisation & Failure Analysis

Optical Microscope – Zeiss Axioskop

Precision Saw – Buehler IsoMet 1000

Grinder-Polisher – Struers LaboPol-5 with automated sample preparation

Temperature Chamber – Binder DIN12880

Reflow Oven – Gold Flow 12GT Conveyor

SEM - JOEL JSM-840 with Princeton Gamma-Tech EDS (MSSI)

Focused Ion Beam – FIB200 workstation with SIMS capability (MSSI)

Transmission Electron Microscope – JEM-2011 200kV with STEM (MSSI)

X-ray Diffraction – Philips X’Pert PRO MPD  (MSSI)

X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy – high performance (MSSI)

MODELLING SOFTWARE

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software: FLUENT and FLOTHERM

Finite Element Analysis software: ANSYS and LS-DYNA

3D Mechanical Design Software (SolidWorks) with Rapid Prototyping Facility

DATA ACQUISITION AND SIGNAL ANALYSIS

National Instruments LabVIEW data acquisition and control systems

D-Space High Speed Data Acquisition Systems

Hitachi VC-6045A 100 Mhz Storage Oscilloscope

HP Dynamic Signal Analyser 0 - 100 kHz

HP Spectrum Analyser 9 kHz-1.5GHz (ESA-L1500A)

OPTICAL LABORATORY

Stokes has recently established an optical laboratory to perform strain, velocity and temperature measurements at both macro and micro-scales. A 2D Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) system used for macro velocity measurement has been adapted for m-PIV. Infinite Fringe Mode, Digital Speckle Pattern and Digital Moiré Subtraction Interferometry are used for strain and temperature measurement.

NI LabVIEW and LabWindows/CVI data acquisition and control system

Olympus Microscope

Dantec PIV System

IDT High-Speed Camera (5,145 Frames/s at a Resolution of 512 x 512 pixels)

2x Vibration Isolation Optical Tables 2m x 2m

30mW He-Ne Laser

50mJ Nd-YAG Lasers

CCD Detectors

ESPI Test Digital Processing: Digital Speckle Pattern Interferometry Digital Moiré Subtraction

IDEA Abel Inversion Tomography