Part of a team that decided to use labVIEW to measure the temperature profile of hot air as it flows through a pipe. It was hypothesized that as air flowed along the pipe's length, it would tend to decrease in temperature, and the air temperature profile would tend to be hottest towards the center of the pipe and coldest closest to the edge.

Using a 7-ft long, 5-in diameter PVC pipe, was chosen for the measurements. At one end, a heat gun was fixed to shoot the hot air into the pipe, and along the pipe's length, six holes were drilled one foot apart. For each hole, a thermocouple was placed in each opening at 5 different depths across the diameter of the pipe and temperature data was gathered. At each depth, data acquisition occurred over at least 20 seconds to allow the airflow to reach a state of equilibrium and hopefully minimize data collection error. labVIEW was used to collect the data and output it to a Microsoft Excel file for analyzation.

The results of the project were similar to what was hypothesized in the beginning: The temperature of the air tended to be highest towards the center of the pipe's diameter and lowest at the outermost depths, and as air flowed along the length of the pipe, the temperature decreased.