Design and Development of a New 0.5m Hypersonic Wind Tunnel Facility at Indian Institute of Science

Abstract

This paper describes the realization of a 0.5m hypersonic wind tunnel, second largest of its kind in India, at the High Speed Wind Tunnel Complex at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. The project was fully funded by the Aerodynamics Panel of AR & DB. There were two major activities associated with the project. One of them pertains to the "Strengthening of the existing 0.3m Hypersonic Wind Tunnel "(originally built in 1985) by adding a new high pressure air compressor, a cascade of high pressure air storage tanks, vacuum pumps and vacuum tanks and another related to establishing "an Additional 0.5m Hypersonic Wind Tunnel Leg". Preliminary commissioning trials of the new facility at low stagnation pressures were conducted in October 2013. Subsequently several hypersonic blow downs were carried out on a variety of models at Mach 8.0. Pitot probe measurements performed in the test section confirmed that the flow Mach number was close to Mach 8.0. The total run time measured was around 10 seconds. Thus, a large 0.5m hypersonic wind tunnel was indigenously designed, developed and commissioned in about 30 months at a cost of Rs.6 Crores. The facility was inaugurated by Prof. R. Narasimha in the presence of a large gathering of leading aerospace scientists in the country, on 8th April 2014.