Return to Back Issues main page

Return to Current Issue's Home Page

After growing up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Drew Landman decided to pursue an engineering education at Lehigh University. Sounds like a logical choice that needs no explanation, what with the distinguished engineering school lying a convenient 90 miles east on I-78. But that wasn't Landman's main reason for going there. "I got interested in engineering only superficially. I was interested in bike racing and wanted a school near the velodrome," he says. The velodrome he refers to is the Lehigh Valley Velodrome in Trexlertown, a premier venue in the Mid-Atlantic for bicycle racing. As an amateur road racing cyclist in high school, he had ventured to Trexlertown to compete on the oval track.

So how does a guy seemingly more interested in bike racing than books end up with a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and specializing in fluid dynamics? It turns out his reason for choosing Lehigh had more to do with his chosen profession than it appeared. As he explains, "I tend to like anything that involves interfacing with fluids that doesn't require an engine. That's my real interest." At the time, that meant bicycles. Later it would become sailplanes.

That interest has led Landman to a unique position in the aerospace world, that of assistant manager of the Old Dominion University (ODU) Langley Full Scale Tunnel (LFST) in Hampton, Virginia. As associate professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, he also teaches at Old Dominion University in nearby Norfolk, Virginia.

After getting B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from Lehigh, Landman, 40, started off on a career in industry by working as a mechanical design engineer for Motorola in Mesa, Arizona designing high-speed automated handling and marking machines for integrated circuit packages. But, he reports, "I wasn't very challenged by industry, at least at the job I had. I was doing machine design, which was fun for the first year, but it just ended up being the same thing over and over." He had done some teaching as a master's student at Lehigh, and an opening came up at ODU in their engineering technology department that didn't require a Ph.D. So he took the job in 1987 and became an assistant professor of mechanical engineering technology, teaching mechanical design, computer-aided design and drafting, dynamics, and fluid mechanics.

"While I was there, I enjoyed the teaching, and I decided I wanted to learn a little more. At the same time, I was a private sailplane pilot and having a lot of fun with that, and aerodynamics interested me a lot," he recalls. He had flown radio-controlled planes as a kid, and while at ODU, he joined the Tidewater Soaring Society and sponsored student field trips so they could experience motorless flight. His Ph.D. came in 1998. The timing of his doctoral work coincided with a revitalization of the LFST, creating a groundfloor opportunity.

Located at Langley Air Force Base, adjacent to the NASA Langley Research Center, the LFST was put into service by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA's predecessor, in 1931. At the time, it ranked as the largest wind tunnel ever built, and it was considered a cutting-edge design. The tunnel test section measures 30 feet high and 60 feet wide with dual fans powered by 4,000-horsepower electric motors, each driving a four-blade 35.5-foot laminated wood propeller. Over the years, engineers conducted full-scale tests in it on a vast range of vessels, including military and civilian biplanes, all major WW-II monoplane fighters, general aviation aircraft, supersonic transports, jet fighters, airships, and submarines. But with the end of the Cold War, NASA began to experience budget cuts and closed a number of facilities at Langley, including the wind tunnel in 1995.

Jim Cross, an aerospace engineer who served as dean of ODU's engineering school at the time, heard about the closing and recognized that an important national capability was being lost. He negotiated with NASA and reached an agreement for ODU to operate the wind tunnel for all types of transportation systems that would benefit the private sector. It became a self-sufficient Enterprise Center of ODU's College of Engineering and Technology and the largest university-operated wind tunnel in the world.

Seeking people to help get the facility running, ODU tapped Landman. "NASA had stripped out all the data acquisition equipment and instrumentation, and that's what I had done for my dissertation, so it was a natural fit," he recalls. In 1996, he became chief engineer for the LFST, a job that not only had him not only specifying and implementing a data acquisition system but also serving as project and test engineer for wind tunnel tests.

Today, as assistant manager, Landman supervises staff and students at the wind tunnel, plans and executes tests, and assists the manager in administrative duties. As a tenured professor, he teaches an experimental fluid mechanics course featuring hands-on wind tunnel experiments and an undergraduate and masters course, introduction to aerodynamics.

The LFST provides a wide range of airflow tests for a diversity of aerospace, surface vehicle, and specialty applications. "Most of what we test is race cars," Landman says. This comes by no accident, as Cross had studied the market and found race cars lucrative. They've tested the BMW Racing Sedan and Ferrari 333SP race car, and they service 27 NASCAR car and truck teams. Working with Volvo and the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology, they also developed measurement techniques and hardware for testing tractor-trailer trucks.

Actually, the original agreement forbade ODU from testing aerospace vehicles, and converting from planes to cars created a challenge for Landman. "Since that was what the tunnel was designed for, that made it a little tough." As his first project, he had to design and build an automotive force-balance, a system for measuring down force and drag on a vehicle. Aircraft and cars are supported differently in the wind tunnel; airplanes are suspended up in the flow, while cars sit just off the ground. "To simulate the roadway, you have to do some things to the air along the ground." And car developers wanted more sensitivity than the tunnel had with planes, so they had to design for that.

But the ban on aircraft testing has since lifted, and LFST personnel now spend 10 to 15 percent of their time testing planes. Most notably, they support a test program in partnership with NASA Langley Research Center and the Wright Experience, a group dedicated to building, documenting, and flying the aircraft of the Wright Brothers. This comes as the Experimental Aircraft Association and Wright Experience prepare to recreate the historic first flight of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 2003.

In serving as a Wright Experience engineering team member, Landman reports, "I'm testing the correctly-reproduced models of Wright flight hardware." The team has tested the 1901 and 1902 full Wright gliders and propellers from their 1905 and 1910 models, and on his own, he tested the Wright airfoil geometries. They want to find out what the Wright brothers knew in light of the fact their measurements were crude. "We've had a lot of fun with that." And they wanted to determine if the planes were actually stable or if perhaps the Wrights were just great pilots. "It turns out to be a mix of things, depending on the airplane." They've discovered that the 1910 propeller had an astonishing efficiency of over 80 percent -- modern ones range from the high 80s to 90 percent.

How has ODU's venture with the LFST fared? "It has really put us on the map, particularly in aerospace engineering," Landman states. After starting operation $400,000 in debt, they now find themselves financially self-sufficient. They enjoy status as the fourth largest wind tunnel in the world, the second largest in the U.S., and the largest commercially available. "The students love it," Landman adds. "We constantly have people calling us up from various aerospace companies asking when our next batch of graduates is coming out. They just love the hands-on experience and getting to work around all the different vehicles that come through here."

When asked if he considers the wind tunnel a special opportunity in his career, Landman replies, "A resounding yes to that. It's made things very interesting for me. I really enjoy going to work." He explains his fascination with tunnel testing: "I'm intrigued by the mystery of fluid dynamics, the idea that you can't really see what's going on. You're trying to predict what's going to happen. One way you can probe this mystery is by measuring forces and pressures, and I always found that interesting."

Finding fulfillment with the LFST has helped Landman take his mind off the fact he has had to quit bicycling for now because of an injury to a tendon. But he does a lot of sailing on a 15-foot Vanguard racing dinghy, and he continues flying sailplanes. "I just enjoy all those vehicles that somehow get something for free." And he manages to transfer the knowledge to engine-powered vehicles, too.

Progressive Engineer
Editor: Tom Gibson
2049 Crossroads Drive, Lewisburg, PA 17837
570-568-8444 * progress@jdweb.com
©2004 Progressive Engineer