Supersonic Wind Tunnel
The supersonic wind tunnel facility is a blow-down, cold-flow tunnel with a fixed geometry nozzle. Currently it is equipped with a Mach 3 nozzle with a 127 mm diameter exit. The 13.8 MPa storage tanks allow for run times up to 1 minute. The nominal stagnation pressure and temperature are 1585 kPa and 280 K respectively which gives a Reynolds number per unit length of 125 millions per meter. During experiments the stagnation pressure is maintained within 5% of its nominal value through a LabView based PID controller. Plenum chamber conditions such as pressure and temperature, as well as primary storage tanks and test section pressures are recorded and logged for each run.
Equipment
Tomographic Particle Image Velocimetry
- LaVision turn-key TPIV system.
- 2440 x 2040 pixels, 123 frames/sec at full resolution, 2.7 x 2.7 micron pixels.
- Nd:YAG Dual Cavity pulsed laser, 2 x 200 mJ/pulse at 532 nm, 15 Hz pulse rate.
- DaVis 11 Software with TPIV add-on
- Titanium Dioxide seed particles, 20 nm nominal size.
Two-point Focused Laser Differential Interferometry
- Currently being developed
- Cobolt Samba 532nm, 1500mW CW laser
Schlieren/Shadowgraph System
A 5″ diameter schlieren/shadowgraph is available at the supersonic wind tunnel.