Shaping future aircraft

Purdue University engineers have recently developed a wind tunnel that is the only one of its kind in the world capable of running quietly at “hypersonic” speeds, helping researchers to design advanced aircraft and missiles.

No other wind tunnel runs quietly while conducting experiments in airstreams travelling at Mach 6 – six times the speed of sound, said Steven Schneider, an aerospace engineer and professor in Purdue’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Researchers will use the $1 million wind tunnel to help design advanced aircraft that travel at hypersonic speeds, or around 4,000 miles per hour at sea level.

Purdue engineers will present a paper about the wind tunnel tomorrow, Thursday January 12 during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Aerospace Sciences meeting and Exhibit in Reno, Nevada.

A team of Purdue engineers led by Schneider finished assembling the wind tunnel in 2001.

“After four years of debugging, recent tests have shown that it does, indeed, run quietly at Mach 6,” Schneider said. “The wind tunnel airflow has about one-tenth to one-thirtieth of the noise in other high-speed wind tunnels.”