Fluid Mechanics Lab

The Fluid Mechanics Laboratory is located in Rooms 152, 153, and 152A of the Academic Wing of the Texas A&M University at Qatar Engineering Building.  These spaces have a total area of approximately 2,000 ft².  During the Fall semester, the MEEN 345 – Fluid Mechanics Laboratory class is offered with an average of ten students. Students work in groups of two on laboratory exercises.

During a typical laboratory session, the laboratory instructor gives a fifteen- to thirty-minute-long presentation on the theory, objectives, procedure, and required results that are associated with the experiment for the session.  Students then perform the experiment.  For most of the experiments, each group of students works with the hydraulic or flow loop.  Once students obtain the data from their experiment, they are free to work on the computers in the Fluids Laboratory classroom or use the Open Access Computer Laboratory to analyze data and prepare short reports that are required for the experiments.  

The equipment in the Laboratory was purchased when the Department of Mechanical Engineering moved into the newly constructed Engineering Building. Maintenance and modifications of this new equipment will be scheduled over the coming years to maintain safe operation and delay obsolescence of the equipment.  The flow loop has dual water pumps driven with infinitely variable speed drives, coriolis mass flow meters as the primary standard for the loop.  Pressure gages, and a valving system permits different combinations of tank and flow configurations.  The flow loop draws water from a 250-gallon water tank and returns to another 250 gallon tank that is mounted on a digital scale.  The scale, in conjunction with a stopwatch, is used for fundamental calibration of flow meters and other flow related experiments.  The facilities in the Laboratory are quite adequate to demonstrate basic fluid mechanic principles and to familiarize students with certain basic instrumentation used in fluid mechanics.

There are different types of flow meters, manometers, pressure transducers, pressure gages, and NIST traceable calibration standards for various instruments.  For every experiment, students are required to determine the overall uncertainty and the contributions to the overall uncertainty of the uncertainties that are associated with measurements with various instruments.

The Laboratory Instructor for the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory will evaluate the performance of the equipment in the Laboratory at the end of each semester.  Based on this evaluation, small improvements will be planned into the next operating budget for supplies and/or repairs.  Funding for major improvements will be requested through the MEEN Program Coordinator.