Photoessay #1241 - Wind Tunnel

Another fun day with the Asay family. We started out at the Hampton History Museum. A small but beautiful museum in Hampton proper. Hampton is the oldest continuous English-speaking community in America. In fact, the settlers first considered a site near Hampton before going on to the Jamestown site. Soon thereafter (1609?) a settlement was established at Hampton. Burned down several times. Informal wonderful docent who gave a great tour.

Then on to NASA Langley to the facility that Matt has worked with for over 20 years. On Matt's request, the facility director agreed to give us the 'nickel tour'. At the end, Matt said, that wasn't the nickel tour, that was the extra fancy tour. I only had the vaguest notion of what a wind tunnel was or what you would use it for. Apparently, aircraft (and submarine) engineers can test their design by making a scale model of stainless steel and a whole bunch of instrumentation and running it through a wind tunnel.

From Wikipedia:

(the) airflow pattern over a scale model would be the same for the full-scale vehicle if a certain flow parameter were the same in both cases. This factor, now known as the Reynolds Number, is a basic parameter in the description of all fluid-flow situations, including the shapes of flow patterns, the ease of heat transfer, and the onset of turbulence. This comprises the central scientific justification for the use of models in wind tunnels to simulate real-life phenomena

This facility built in the 1980s apparent has the capacity for a very high Reynolds Number.

We saw where they build the models, and the control room, and where they can enter the tunnel (which runs around in a circle), and the outside of the tunnel itself which uses a lot of hydrogen and very cold and very expensive.

Matt has been working on the software and the requirements for a new system. Very impressive and challenging to understand.

Then a buffet Indian lunch. We went off to the Mariner museum in Newport News but found it was closed on Tuesdays. But we walked about a half mile on the Noland trail around a lake/reservoir.

Our host giving us an introduction in the small lobby. We had to get extra fancy badges to go in there.