Next to the McDonald’s in Ypenburg, an old sports hall is the spot where Terra and his team are doing their airflow research. The sports hall had been used by primary school children and will now be demolished – on the walls, you can still see the paintings the children made as a last goodbye. The lights in the toilets do not work, neither does the heater.
Special soap
Terra and his team can use this abandoned place for a few weeks. “It is nice we can use this space, because there is no place for us on campus,” Terra says. He built a tunnel where a cyclist cycles through a wall of small soap bubbles. “We use specially made soap that doesn’t break that fast and whose bubbles stay small. The formula is secret.” The special soap is very expensive: while shooting the video, the team spent 100 euros worth of soap.
Available for more sports
When the cyclist goes through the tunnel, the airflow around him is measured. This gives a more realistic view of the aerodynamics than a normal wind tunnel, where the person is standing still and the air is blown in his face. This technique looks handy for other sports as well. Why is it now used for cycling? “Well, I like cycling a lot myself,” confesses Terra. “Plus, building a set-up like this on an ice track to measure an ice-skater’s aerodynamics for example, is way harder than in a sports hall.” But if this research has good results, it can be applied to a lot of other sports as well.
Text: Roos van Tongeren
We shot another video on this subject earlier, watch it here.
TU Delft TV / TU Delft TV is a collaboration between Delta and the Science Centre. The crew consists of TU Delft students.
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