Those photos are absolutely amazing, what a stunning demonstration of innovation!
Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels
21–30 of 31 posts
Re: Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels
#22With all the technological advances, why are wind tunnels still widely in use today (instead of pure computational approaches)?
There are lots of things to test besides basic aerodynamics. And even for that sometimes you want real data to validate models before building the full size thing.
Things that are tested/validated in wind tunnels nowadays: effect of different paint and coatings, engine inlet flow, noise, tunned mass dampers, effect of placement of sensors, control surface flutter.
Re: Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels
#23With all the technological advances, why are wind tunnels still widely in use today (instead of pure computational approaches)?
CFD is actually really difficult to get "right". Really tiny changes to simulation setup (mesh sizing, boundary conditions, solver choice, etc) can make big changes to the final results, it's honestly more of an art than a science for very complex simulations. The simulation will converge on any number of setups, but that doesn't guarantee your setup is a valid estimation of reality. So scale model testing is still a great validation of your CFD.
Re: Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels
#24With all the technological advances, why are wind tunnels still widely in use today (instead of pure computational approaches)?
Because it's not enough to just simulate things.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/02/28/boeing-says-thorough-t...
> Both errors could have been caught before launch if Boeing had performed more thorough software testing on the ground, according to John Mulholland, vice president and manager of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner program.
> Mulholland said Boeing engineers performed testing of Starliner’s software in chunks, with each test focused on a specific segment of the mission. Boeing did not perform an end-to-end test of the entire software suite, and in some cases used stand-ins, or emulators, for flight computers.
Cheaping out cost billions and nearly two astronauts.
Re: Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels
#25With all the technological advances, why are wind tunnels still widely in use today (instead of pure computational approaches)?
In addition to the other comments, I just want to point out that we _do_ do a tremendous amount of CFD. The Pleiades supercomputer [0] sits in a building just down the street from the large wind tunnel at Ames Research Center, is generally ranked somewhere in the top 150 supercomputers in the world, and is largely used for CFD work to complement the wind tunnel work.
Re: Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels
#26When I was a kid, my friend's dad was an engineer at Grumman, and he took us to see a test in their supersonic wind tunnel. The most prominent memory, is how unbelievably loud it was, and the next most prominent memory was that all the engineers were jealous of Lockheed, who had a much better wind tunnel that could run for much longer tests.
Re: Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels
#27The picture of donkeys helping construct a wind tunnel at Langley is pretty interesting. Never thought anything used in the space race would have been built with animals.
Re: Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels
#28Many of those pictures look like great reasons for lockout tagout.
Re: Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels
#29(2018)
Re: Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels
#30In 2014 I went to the open house event that NASA Ames had in honor of their 75th anniversary. They had the giant 80 by 120 foot wind tunnel open for viewing from the outside and I had a very hard time comprehending the visual size of it because the only scale references I had were the square lights on the ceiling. It was an experience that stuck with me. A few years prior I lived in Sunnyvale and even several miles a…
Some of this is still visible: https://maps.app.goo.gl/de6StyBysTMH2Xon8?g_st=ic
Nice website with Ames Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel history: https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-ames-unitary-plan-wind-tunnel/