Ground Testing in Oxfords High-Speed Wind Tunnels by Dr Tobias Hermann

On Friday 22nd of November, Dr Tobias Hermann gave a talk to our society delving into his research of hypersonic flight. He started by giving a background into the reasoning behind the research and where different speeds and pressures apply. A mars return tragectory would vary quite a bit from a low-earth orbit return, and the different wind tunnels and their configurations aim to understand different conditions of hypersonic flight.

The wind tunnel that his group works on uses a 3 stage design and only operates for a short amount of time. It uses high pressure helium to burst a bulkhead pushing more gas, of a chosen composition, into the target chamber maintaining hypersonic conditions for a test part very briefly. This method of design is great for understanding airflow but it lacks testing of heating, so much research is put into a future wind tunnel which preheats a sample with a plasma, then quickly moves it into the setup previously discussed.

Blog by Alex Bedford