Wind tunnels
Our wind tunnel facilities - some unique in the country - cover the speed range from subsonic to hypersonic flow. We have the instrumentation and technical skills to undertake both force and high-quality point, surface and field measurements
Key equipment
Closed-circuit water tunnel
- 0.5m x 0.5m x 2m
- maximum speed 2m/s
Hypersonic wind tunnel
- 7.5 second run time
- Maximum velocity 1.2 km/s
- Total pressure up to 850 kPa
- Total temperature range 300-950 Kelvin
- Mach 4, 5 and 6 nozzles w/ 6” diameter outlet and models up to 210mm long, two Mach five nozzles with centre bodies for boundary-layer transition testing.
- Three component sting (lift, drag and pitching moment)
- Eight channel 500 kS/s/ch acquisition rate for transient pressure data
- Eight thermocouple channels
- 20 channel static pressure data
- Patch panels with pass-through for Ethernet, BNC, DIN, thermocouple, static pressure and gas injection to the test section.
- Dual-sting testing
- Drop-testing capability
Reynolds number range:
- Mach 4.0: 0.4 million/metre to 38 million/metre
- Mach 5.0: 0.2 million/metre to 25 million/metre
- Mach 6.0: 0.6 million/metre to 10 million/metre
- Capability to design and test at lower Mach numbers.
Open-circuit boundary layer tunnel
- 1.2m x 0.3m x 5m
- maximum speed 40m/s
Open-circuit "Project" wind tunnel
- 1.2m x 0.9m x 2m
- maximum speed 50m/s
- useful for aerodynamics studies
Open-circuit wind tunnel
- 0.5m x 0.5m x 1m
- maximum speed 40m/s
Open-circuit wind tunnel ("Bob")
- 0.9m x 0.9m x 5m
- maximum speed 25m/s
- useful for 'environmental' wind turbine work
Tilting flume
- 0.5m x 0.3m x 5m
- maximum speed 1m/s
Trisonic wind tunnel
- 0.15m x 0.3m (Mach 0 to 0.8, 1.8)
Measurement capabilities
- Force and moment measurement (overhead balance, Project tunnel), six component strain gauge balances
- Schlieren systems for visualisation of high-speed flow
- Scalar field measurements (Planar laser-induced fluorescent)
- Full-surface temperature and pressure measurements (temperature and pressure-sensitive paints)
- Temporally resolved high-spatial resolution near-wall velocity measurements (one, two or three velocity-component hot-wire anemometry and laser Doppler anemometry)
- High-spatial resolution velocity measurements (2D and stereo Particle-Image Velocimetry)