Chennai:
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully conducted the first blow down test of the newly realised Trisonic Wind Tunnel at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram.
The Trisonic Wind Tunnel is a system to aid aerodynamic design of rockets and re-entry spacecrafts by characterizing a scaled model by evaluating forces, moments, load distribution, unsteady pressures, acoustic levels etc.
The Trisonic wind tunnel is a major step towards India’s increasing self-reliance in Aerospace sector. The tunnel has an overall length of about 160m and has a maximum cross section of 5.4m.The tunnel can be used for testing various space vehicles in three flight regimes–below the speed of sound, at the speed of sound and above the speed of sound–hence the name trisonic wind tunnel.
The tunnel can simulate flight conditions from 0.2 times the speed of sound (68 m/s) to 4 times the speed of sound (1360 m/s). The blow down was formally switched on by ISRO Chairman and Secretary Department of Space S Somanath in the presence of senior officials of ISRO including VSSC Director Dr S Unnikrishnan Nair, LPSC Director, VSSC Dr. V Narayanan and IISU Director Dr D Sam Dayala Dev.
The huge structure was built with several hundred tonnes of steel and was implemented through M/s Tata Projects India Limited Mumbai in association with M/s Aiolos Engineering Corporation, Canada and fully realised by industries across India such as M/s Walchandnagar Industries, Pune, M/s Acoustic India, Tiruchirappalli, M/s Artson Engineering, Nashik, M/s Summits Hygronics, Coimbatore, M/s Hydrocare Fluid Power Systems, Bangalore and M/s Siemens Energy, Ahmedabad.
