This research creates a steady headwind at a user position in the scaled Treadport Active Wind Tunnel (TPAWT). The TPAWT adds a wind display system to the previously developed Treadport virtual environment, and this research builds upon prior work to provide improved control of headwind angle at the user position. Key to this research is the addition of a negative pressure plenum at the rear of the treadport to improve nominal flow stability. The previous controller based upon the small gain theorem with a dynamic extension is then modified to provide wind angle feedback control. A conditional angular rate-switching controller is added to reduce wind angle oscillations at the user. A vorticity-meter is developed to assure that the wind flow is centered at the user position. As a result, this research reduces wind angle error by 75% compared to previous work.

This research focuses on development of a haptic system to create controlled air flow acting on a user in the Treadport virtual environment. The Treadport active wind tunnel (TPAWT) is thus created in order to produce air flow patterns that allow a variety of wind angles and speeds to be felt by the user. In order to control this system in real-time, the small gain theorem is used in conjunction with a dynamic extension to formulate an output feedback control law. Examples of controller formulations are derived and discrete time simulations in FLUENT demonstrate their effectiveness. The controller is then validated experimentally using a scale model of the TPAWT.