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World's Largest Plasma Wind Tunnel Reaches Completion
Paris (ESA) March 27, 2001 On 13 March 2001 'wind-on' was achieved in the Scirocco Plasma Wind Tunnel. For the first time a 6200 degree Celsius hot air plasma, that is an ionized gas produced at extremely high temperatures and flowing at a speed of approximately 4 km per second, was generated in the newly constructed Italian arc jet test facility. The Scirocco Plasma Wind Tunnel, erected at CIRA, the Italian Aerospace Research Centre in Capua, Italy, has now entered the acceptance test phase. This is the last phase of a very ambitious project funded jointly by ESA and the Italian Ministry for University and Research. This test facility is the largest of its kind in the world. It features a large electrical segmented 70 megawatt arc heater and a nozzle with a 2 metre diameter exit to allow full-scale models of space-vehicle thermal protection systems to be tested for up to 30 minutes, a period which corresponds to the duration of re-entry. The Scirocco Plasma Wind Tunnel will be used to study earth atmosphere re-entry and space-vehicle trajectory. Designed for testing high temperature materials and structures, this wind tunnel can also be used in other fields of aerospace technology development, such as advanced space propulsion and combustion systems. After an extensive and meticulous design process, CIRA started to construct the wind tunnel on site in January 1995. Then in January 2000 start-up and commissioning commenced after completing the subsystem integration. A step-by-step approach has been followed in order to minimise the risks of starting-up such a high-powered system. Careful stand-alone subsystem testing and extended locally integrated subsystem tests have now shown that high power can be safely handled by the system. In September 2000, a first run was performed using a sub-scale 2 megawatt arc heater and in December 2000 the first ignition of the full-size arc heater was performed with Argon. Now that 'wind-on' has been achieved, the project is now starting to explore the operating possibilities of the facility by increasing power gradually. Once this stage is completed, an important operational readiness milestone will take place - the official demonstration. The goal is to reach this objective by May 2001. This will then be followed by a one-year operational validation phase. ESA is responsible for the programme management, with support from the French Space Agency CNES for the co-financing parties, ESA and the Italian Ministry for University and Research, while the project is managed by CIRA. The major companies involved are: CISA (Ansaldo-Fiat Engineering, general integrator, Italy), Aerotherm Corp. (arc heater supplier and process integrator, USA), Ansaldo (power supply, Italy), Laben (automation system, Italy), ASE (air system and heat exchange, USA), Elsag (model support system, Italy) and Navalimpianti (vacuum system, Italy). European aerospace companies together with organisations from Japan are looking at the wind tunnel with great interest and plans for the exploitation of this unique testing tool are being discussed. ESA and CIRA intend to share testing time with potential customers during the operational validation phase, in which the operational capabilities and limits of the Scirocco Plasma Wind Tunnel will be investigated. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links CIRA MURST SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express Space
Yuri Plus 41bb
Sydney - Apr 08, 2002It's only a year since the world staged the inaugural Yuri's Night celebrations, but so much has changed on Earth, and in space. In 2001, we contemplated a world that had shed most of the tensions associated with the cold war, and watched as several nations assembled the world's first International Space Station. |
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