To test a supersonicĪirplane, you need wind speeds about five times faster than a More speed-and speed is something we need lots of. Having a wind tunnel with narrow sections is an easy way to build up Photo of the 16-foot high-speed wind tunnel at the NASA Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, Moffett Field, California, taken in 1948. High-speed air in the central test laboratory. Note the wide outer sections and the much narrower inner section where the tunnel produces Photo: A wind tunnel is like a giant pipe.
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Where the wind blows much harder, focused by the hills on either side. You force it out through the narrow nozzle, and like a windy valley It works just like a bicycle pump, where the air speeds up when Narrower the pipe, the faster it has to go. Where the pipe is narrow, the air has to speed up to get through. Round, the pipe is wider in some places and much narrower in others. Instead of being uniformly shaped all the way Switch on the fan and air blows round and round the pipe.Īdd a little door so you can get in and a test room in the middle and, hey By courtesy of NASA on the Commons.Ī wind tunnel is a bit like a huge pipe that wraps around on itself in a circle with a fan in Photo: Testing a full-size replica of the 1903 Wright Flyer air plane in the NASAĪmes Full-Scale wind tunnel. Time it's much cheaper to use a small, scale model of the plane in a Space agency NASA does have wind tunnels like this. Testing a life-sized model of your plane-and, indeed, the American There's nothing to stop you building a super-giant wind tunnel and If a planeĭrags (causes air resistance) when it soars through the sky, air willĭrag in exactly the same way when you fire it past a stationary model Plane through the air, why not move the air past the plane instead?įrom a scientific point of view, it's exactly the same. The basic idea of a wind tunnel is simple: if you can't move the Note the engineer standing underneath the plane.
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Photo of an F-86 aircraft, mounted in the 40 x 80 foot full-scale wind tunnel at the NACA Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, Moffett Field California, taken in 1954. Photo: The basic idea: fix the plane on the ground and Through which air blasts at very high speed. Tested on the ground first in a wind tunnel: a pipe-like building If there's a major designĭefect, the plane won't get into the air at all. Good idea what might be causing problems). How air is moving past it (though an experienced test pilot will have a Once a plane's up in the air, there's no easy way to see This is called the science ofĪerodynamics. Find out more Why do we need wind tunnels?ĭesigning planes that will fly quickly, efficiently, andĮconomically is all about making air flow smoothly over their wings and.