Help a College Student With Pipe Flow Calculations

[rcgldr]

You've got a core issue trying to measure the wind speed, which should not be chaging much within the pipes. If you could get a clear pipe, perhaps you could try using soap bubbles instead of pulsed smoke, but since your wind tunnel is drawing air (as opposed to blowing it), you'll need to make sure that the soap bubbles won't be a problem. You'll need to place some tape on the far side of the pipe at regular intervals so you can get an ideal of the speed of the flow within the pipe. Note that the bubbles will move at various speeds depending on location within the pipe, so you'll have to average out the results.

This is what you'd really need, a pulse smoke generator as shown in this video: