Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will use a $17.8 million grant from the US Air Force to create a wind tunnel that can subject samples of materials like high-temperature ceramics to hypersonic conditions—conditions experienced above Mach 5, which is five times the speed of sound.
The work is crucial to the future of hypersonic vehicles such as space shuttles, which slam into Earth’s atmosphere at nearly Mach 25. That tremendous speed heats the shuttle’s surface above 2600 degrees Fahrenheit and subjects it to extreme pressures for up to 15 minutes. The Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters are examples of what can happen when specialized heat-resistant materials called the thermal protection system are weak or damaged.
“We have all these different kinds of wind tunnels that each specialize in examining some aspect of hypersonic flight—aerodynamics, gas chemistry, material degradation during flight—but nobody has the capability to replicate full hypersonic flight conditions,” said Assistant Professor Mark Gragston in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering at the UT Space Institute, part of UT’s Tickle College of Engineering. “There’s a big market for increased testing capability in academic research because that’s where new materials are being developed.”
Read about the access and opportunities the new wind tunnel will create.