Indraft Tunnel for High-Speed Aerodynamics Research

Indraft Tunnel for High-Speed Aerodynamics ResearchIndraft Tunnel for High-Speed Aerodynamics ResearchThe overall objective of the proposed equipment request is to acquire and utilize a supersonicindraft wind tunnel for high-speed aerodynamics research at Stevens Institute of Technology. The purpose of constructing this wind tunnel at Stevens is to give an `in-house' capability to the Parziale research group to:Objective A: Study the fundamentals of high-speed shear flow.Task: Use the indraft tunnel at varying Mach number to study problems including shockwave/transitional boundary-layer interaction and high-speed wind tunnel noise/disturbance level and share this data with the relevant experimental/computational community.Impact: Improve the Navy's capacity to field advanced vehicle concepts through advancing fundamental understanding of boundary-layer physics in shock-wave-dominated flows. This fundamental understanding will aid in the testing and development of new computational models required for predictive efforts.Objective B: Develop non-intrusive optical diagnostics at Stevens for use in large-scale hypersonic ground-test facilitiesTask: Use the indraft tunnel at varying Mach number to rapidly prototype, at low cost, new measurement techniques to more accurately assess critical quantities such as skin friction and heattransfer.Impact: Improve the Navy's capacity to field advanced vehicle concepts through advancing measurement methods, thus reducing programmatic risk.The long-term goal of this equipment request is to bring to Stevens some of the infrastructure required to build a reflected-shock tunnel for testing at realistic total enthalpies typical of Mach 5-10 flight. Note that this tunnel is not funded within this request, but the dump tank and data acquisition system would be common among them. This reflected-shock tunnel would, in the future, be used to study fundamental problems and develop diagnostics where the effects of high-enthalpy (such as vibrational-relaxation and wall-temperature ratio) are important.