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Air Force Builds Quiet Mach 6 Wind Tunnel

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the hold-on-to-your-hat dept.

An anonymous reader writes "To help design 'scramjets' -- vehicles that'll travel thousands of miles per hour as they leave the atmosphere and zip around the globe -- the U.S. Air Force has just funded a wind tunnel that operates quietly at Mach 6. To get a quiet flow, the throat of the Mach 6 nozzle must be polished to a near-perfect mirror finish, eliminating roughness that would trip the flow."

6 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. 18 inches by Janek+Kozicki · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Initially I thought, wow! they will be able to test new aeroplanes in real conditions! No more depending on computer simulations of air flow. That's groundbreaking. But my realistic wife said: 'no way, thwy will not put REAL planes there'. So I checked in TFA:

    The pipe is only 18 inches in diameter

    So long, and thanks for the fish.

    --
    #
    #\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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    1. Re:18 inches by mickyflynn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      they'll use a model, just like the used to before computers. Duh. a model is still "real" unless you take real to mean 1:1 scale with the final production model, or a "real" working aircraft. And they are not going to put all the work and money into building a fullsize or working one without having proven that the basic design is sound. and that can be done with a model.

    2. Re:18 inches by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's called scale models. Do you think that they have "conventional" wind tunnels to test Boeing 777's aerodynamics in true size? I didn't think so. Certainly, it would be nice to have an 18 meter instead of an 18 inch tunnel, but an 18 inch tunnel is much better than nothing. It will still allow for the scramjets to be tested on a limited scale in real life conditions without creating a multimillion dollar delivery package that costs millions per launch and could (crash|explode|burn up) and cost tens of millions more.

  2. Some further comments by Xeirxes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It said in the article that having these surfaces would greatly reduce the amount of heat that an aircraft recieves when returning to the atmosphere. And I was thinking, does that mean that one small tear could rip the aircraft apart, like the Columbia? It seems like it might be more beneficial to build craft that don't rip up like the space shuttle did, than craft that are even lighter.

  3. Re:I loved the part where... by ultranova · · Score: 3, Insightful

    At mach 6 at least it would be a *very* fast death.

    At Mach 6, yes. But if the thing is turned on when the undergrad is inside, the air doesn't just suddenly jump to Mach 6 - no, it accelerates, and that takes time. It takes an especially long time if the pipe is clogged by a human body.

    What will happen is that the undergrad will get an overpressure against her feet or head, likely strong enough to eject her from the pipe. The pressure itself is unlikely to kill her, but injuries sustained when thrown out of the pipe might.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  4. a million? by Loconut1389 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I read and thought "A million bucks? Is that all?" then I read it was 18" in diameter. Oh well.