Experimental Study of Gas Propagation: Parameter Identification and Analysis in a Wind Tunnel

Accurate modeling of airborne material dispersion is essential for environmental and air quality monitoring, robotic olfactory exploration missions, and gas source localization. Both computational fluid dynamics, as well as data-driven gas propagation models, require fitting to experimental data to realistically capture spatio-temporal dynamics of the material – which is difficult to obtain. In this paper, we present some insights from controlled wind tunnel experiments. The collected data provides valuable information about the propagation and dispersion characteristics of gasses released into the atmosphere. Leveraging the known wind conditions in the wind tunnel, and under the assumption that the gas dynamics can be accurately described in terms of advection-diffusion equations, we characterize the sensor response and estimate gas propagation parameters. Specifically, we compute the observed diffusion coefficient and source strength using gas concentration measurements. These parameters can then be used for further refining gas propagation models using experimental data, and for validation of gas source localization algorithms using data collected in controlled environments.