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e-NEWS - March
WIND TUNNEL INTERNATIONAL NEWSWIRE
March 2010
New space plans not to legislators’ taste
Should have thought about it before deciding on such a big policy change: lawmakers unimpressed by new space policy fail to endorse any of Bolden’s future view…
US lawmakers in their considerations of NASA’s reworked policy for the future appear to have reacted badly to the proposals of how to proceed with any alternative to the Bush administration’s Constellation program. In failing to endorse the new policy, Senate and House members have reacted to the notion that private enterprise could be left to continue where the Shuttle program will have left off (when the last flight is completed in the exploitation of space.
Apart from some scepticism as to whether commercial businesses will wish to undertake the type of frontier opening program that NASA could manage with its Ares I and Orion vehicles, Senate and House members are concerned that America could lose its predominance in manned space exploration.
Perhaps nearer to home, they are also piqued by the fact that this radical shift in space policy seemed to have been worked up by a small circle within the administration before being served up as a near ‘fait accompli’. And even more, the loss of space related jobs (7,000 in Florida alone) do not sit well with law makers who need votes.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden tried to make the changes look like part of a streamlined means to the same end as before but neither the Senate nor the House hearings were impressed with no law maker in either hearing endorsing the change.
Waverider is Go - sort of
New York to LA in 30 minutes – or is that 30 years? Will government delays stifle hypersonic flight development?
Hypersonic flight is back on the agenda five years after Boeing’s X-43A demonstrator’s two successful flights in the 2004 NASA program. The X-51 Waverider is planned to demonstrate more operationally realistic technologies than its predecessor so will not be matching the Mach 7 in 11 seconds and Mach 10 in 10 seconds. However, the planned 900 kilometers, five minute flights should demonstrate that practical hypersonic flight is feasible and should test the scramjet engines that will power the flights. However, while Boeing has proposed a follow on program, the government does not currently plan any support beyond the four flight test program.
Adapt and fly on more missions
Heavy lift, high speed, manoeuvrability, one rotor blade fits all for the helicopter that can change the shape of its blades: but first they’ll have to make one…
Sometime this year, Sikorsky is likely to be putting a new type of helicopter rotor blade through tests at the wind tunnel at NASA Ames in California. It will be an experimental adaptive rotor with the aim of actively changing its shape during flight so as to best exploit the conditions and match different payload and mission requirements. And it won’t be the first such test. Boeing has already tested a SMART rotor with piezoelectric controlled flaps in the same facility.
Both the Boeing system and the Sikorsky system using electromechanically controlled adaptive flaps will be ideal candidates to answer military lab DARPA’s call for the development of adaptive rotor blades. The ‘brief’ envisages a rotor system that could perhaps improve payloads by up to 30% and range by 40% or reduce sound by 50% and vibration by 90% against the performance of current fixed rotor blades.
The idea is to enable one helicopter to be able to adapt to a range of mission requirements by changing the diameter, sweep, chord, and tip shape of the blades, as well as other features. Airfoil sections of the blades might incorporate flaps, slats and active flow control.
Blowing better in the wind
To make a better wind turbine blade, Risø DTU has developed a softer side; to its latest wind turbine blade idea, that is…
The Wind Energy Division at Risø DTU has been working to develop a method for controlling the loads on large wind turbine blades using a CRTEF (Controllable Rubber Trailing Edge Flap) a flexible trailing edge controlled by compressed air or hydraulics. Wind tunnel testing of the idea has yielded promising results. The rubber trailing edge was tested in the open jet wind tunnel at the company Velux in Denmark in December 2009, marking the end of a development process running since 2006.
The operational principle is very simple and robust, and it is hoped that the manufacturing process will also be so. Wind tunnel testing showed, among other things, that the outward curve of the flap does not change markedly when subjected to wind loads similar to those on a real turbine blade. In addition, the correlation between the deflection of the flap and the change in lift on the blade section was measured. This produced figures which can be applied to realistically simulate how the flap will reduce operating loads.
The next step will be to develop the rubber trailing edge flap to the point where a full scale prototype model is ready for testing.
Smoother operators
The aerodynamics of trucks matter because the faster the air flows over the truck, the less the fuel flows through the motor and into the atmosphere…
NASA's Ames Research Center in California has recently been the site for a partnership between the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the U.S. Air Force and the conglomerate, Navistar to test new devices that could increase fuel efficiency on large trucks by 12 percent.
Physical tests conducted at the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex, at NASA's Ames Research Center, as well as on supercomputers at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab aimed to find a way to help the trucking industry and other sectors of the economy cut costs on fuel, while reducing carbon-dioxide emissions.
"Think of a trailer as a box," said LLNL senior scientist Kambiz Salari. "We're trying to trick the (air) flow into thinking the box is more aerodynamic."
The idea, he said, was to figure out how best to reduce drag that comes when air hits different parts of a truck as it speeds down a highway. By covering certain parts of the truck, drag can be reduced, Salari explained.
And while much of the flow physics research into finding the efficiencies was conducted on LLNL's Linux cluster supercomputers, the wind tunnel tests were necessary for a "sanity check" for the researchers, Salari said.
Canary in the Wind Tunnel
See what birds are doing to get pointers to what is happening in the ecosystem: The University of Western Ontario leads the way…
You may think of Wind Tunnels as part of the highest tech economy but sometimes they can be developed to work with more natural subjects. In this vein, The University of Western Ontario’s new hypobaric bird wind tunnel (the first such facility in the world) will allow researchers to study avian flight while altering such variables as air pressure, moisture, humidity and altitude.
The new 13,000-square-foot Advanced Facility for Avian Research (AFAR) is also home to cutting-edge laboratories devoted to learning how changes in the environment affect birds’ neural and physiological systems, and their reproduction and migration patterns.
The $9.2 million facility allows researchers to understand birds’ abilities to adapt to environments, which provides important insight into conservation efforts, ecosystem health, disease and understandings of how birds respond to climate change.
“Birds are also an important model for neuroscience,” says Scott MacDougall-Shackleton, the facility’s principal investigator. “Many breakthroughs have been made on birds, then mammals, including advances in knowledge related to neuroplasticity – which is the reorganization of neurons in the brain based on experience.”
With studies of at least a dozen species ongoing at any given point, full consideration has been paid to ensure the birds live in as comfortable and realistic semi-natural environments as possible. Special chambers also allow researchers to reflect seasonal changes by varying light and the temperature from two to 40 degrees Celsius, which is particularly significant to studies of breeding patterns.
Just like the old ‘canary in the coal mine’, birds are markers of the ecosystem.