Research on Adaptive Wall Wind Tunnels

Community breakdown

Bars show the community-aggregated score per category. Rate this book to contribute.

The objective of this research was to investigate the utility of the Calspan self-correcting wind tunnel for minimizing or eliminating wall interference effects in two-dimensional transonic flows when shock waves from the test model extend to the tunnel walls. This report summarizes the experimental research performed with two-dimensional airfoils in the Calspan self-correcting wind tunnel and the theoretical research accomplished in support of the experiments. The experiments were performed with airfoil models having 4% and 6% solid blockage. The initial experiments with the 6%-blockage model were devoted to determining a practical mode of operation when shock waves from the model extend to the wall. The most practical model is to use wall control to obtain the desired distribution of longitudinal velocity components for subcritical walls. The Mach number is then increased and the wall control is readjusted, sequentially, until the desired test condition is achieved. At the high Mach numbers of interest, however, the available wall control was limited locally, and tunnel system changes were required. A method is reported for analyzing self-correcting wind tunnels with porous walls.