I am a senior in Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech (as of 2008.04.03). This project is for my senior design project, Drag Reduction in Turbulent Pipe Flow. I'm really just putting this up for my teammates for instructions and support. Without getting into the fluid mechanics of the system, the basic idea of the project is oscillating a pipe to alter vortex structures and reduce drag. This software controls the servo via serial port (RS-232) to create specified oscillations and connects to a National Instruments data acquisition board to record data via a 4-20ma output on a Signet Magmeter.

Because this software is for my senior design project and there is already intellectual patents on the concepts of the project, a download will not be available.

Use of xDR.NET

These instructions may not be up to date as the most recent version, but I will try to keep up with all updates.

Here are some basic instructions on the use of xDR. First, close and re-open xDR between runs. Although is should be okay to not restart, the software is far from robust and that may cut down on potential issues.

Starting Use

Open Windows Explorer either and navigate to the data folder (My Documents/DragData, probably). Find the highest run number in the list. One higher will be the run number for your next run. In this case, the highest is 19, so 20 is the next run number.



Now open xDR if you haven't already. Go to the Run Params tab and enter the run number and water height in fraction or decimal inches. Enter your name in the Operator field. If there is any other relevant information, such as using a funnel or channel in the catch, put that info in the Information area.



Switch to the Settings tab. There are a lot of things that can be changed, but only a couple important ones. The Physical Channel needs to be set to Dev2/ai8. I usually leave Sample Rate at 100 Hz and Samples to Read to 500, but you don't have to. Lastly verify that the Data Folder is correct (same folder you used earlier in Win Exp).



Go to the Database tab and make sure Record to CSV is checked. Although you used to specify the file, xDR automatically chooses the file.



Go back to the Run Params and click Save Params.


Go to the Main tab and click Start when you are ready.



After you have run the experiment, you can come back to this one later by entering the run number and clicking Read Params on the Run Params tab. There's a lot of other stuff, but this covers the basics.