National Wind Tunnel Facility

Jonathan MorrisonDepartment of Aeronautics, Imperial College

Aerodynamics Tools and Methods in Aircraft DesignOctober 14-15, 2019

Royal Aeronautical Society

http://www.nwtf.ac.uk/html/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Wind_Tunnel_Facility

https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/research/facilities/access/otherfacilities/national-wind-tunnel-facility-nwtf/1

National Wind Tunnel Facility

• A network of 23 talent-focused facilities distributed across 12 universities

• Multi-sectoral research, low TRL (<3) but with aerospace focus• Full range of Reynolds and Mach numbers• Open access for up to 25% of time• Universities are

– Clearly committed to wind tunnels– Research intensive– Prepared to demonstrate best practice

Open Access

Key Research Challenges

• Turbulence

✓ “..the most important unsolved problem of classical physics”

• Energy efficiency

✓ The central challenge for new fluid-based systems

• Fluid – surface interaction

✓UAVs, VIV, shock waves

• Scalar transport

✓Dispersion, air-sea CO2 exchange

• Noise

✓Generated by transport and energy processes

• High-speed aerothermodynamics

✓High M transition, shock wave / boundary layer interaction radiation heating

Infrastructure Realignment

• Need: 182 wind tunnels in UK– 75 of which are in universities – of these, only 10-20 are research

active

• Tunnels supported through FEC estate rate – does not reflect true running costs (e.g. space charges, depreciation)

• Wakeham report 2010: research efficiency, sustainability• EPSRC:

– Delivery Plan (2011-15): “support fewer facilities in a more sustainable way”

– Strategic Plan 2015: “efficiencies through equipment sharing and strategic investments of capital around centres of excellence”

– Delivery Plan 2016/17-2019/20: mid-range facilities to enable “UK access to national, state of the art infrastructure, expertise and techniques that are core to EPSRC research priorities”.

Selected Tunnels

• Trans/Supersonic: Cambridge, City*,

Imperial* (0.4 < M < 3.5)

• Hypersonic: Imperial, Oxford* (4 < M < 25)

• Aerospace: Glasgow (rotorcraft), Cranfield

(icing)

* New University investment ~£75m

• Low speed: Cranfield, Imperial*, Southampton*, City

(transition) (Re/m < 3.3×106)

• Environmental: Cranfield (ABL), Southampton*

(hydroscience tank, anechoic tunnel)

From 2014:

Review of tunnels 2018- mission statement

➢Original list of constituent tunnelso Match to original criteria

✓Commitment of research-intensive university✓PI with international visibility – commitment to wind

tunnels✓Investigators prepared to demonstrate best practice✓Balance of tunnels

o Aerospace dominance through ATIo Approaches by Surrey (environmental),

Manchester (aerospace), Bristol (aerospace & civil), Birmingham (environmental & civil)

o Tunnel review, summer 2018: additional 6 tunnels from 11 replies from 11 EoI

o Growth to 23 tunnels: 12 universities6

Selected TunnelsAdditional from 2019

• Atmospheric - ABL: Birmingham

• Rail: Birmingham TRAIN rig

▪ Mark Sterling

• Environmental: EnFlo Surrey

▪ Alan Robins

Selected TunnelsAdditional from 2019

• Aero-acoustic: Bristol

▪ Jonathan Cooper

• Automotive: Loughborough

▪ Martin Passmore

• Supersonic - HSST: Manchester

(4 ⩽M ⩽ 6)

▪ Shan Zhong

MENtOR – EPSRC

• Tilt-rotor aeromechanics, including CFD, composites, dynamics, control, aeroelasticity.

• Glasgow lead, with Bath, Bristol, Cranfield, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, £2.8 m

• Glasgow – rotor rig (gearbox development)

• Vertical Lift Network – includes ARA, Leonardo, DSTL

• NWTF facilities: Glasgow 9x7, Cranfield 8x6, Bath 5x7

HL-CRM – Boeing, QinetiQ, ATI

• QinetiQ 5 m tunnel: 3.5 m full-span model

• Boeing / QinetiQ collaboration also includes 1.2 m half-span model

• Development of NWTF proposal– Additional 1.2 m half-span model

– Variable geometry, complementary test programmes

– Cranfield 8x7, Glasgow 9x7, Imperial 10x5, Southampton (Mitchell)

– Model & data developed as national assets

• Workshop QinetiQ, October 16, 2019

Hypersonics – Oxford

• T6 substantial refurbishment:

– Several modes of operation: (reflected) shock / expansions

– Europe’s highest speed tunnel, 10 km/sec, M<30

• HDT: refurbished Ludwieg tube

– light piston compression heating

– cold hypersonic flow

• Both used for EPSRC + RR “Transpiration cooling” grant + EOARD, ESA, DSTL, REL

• LDT: “satellite demise” + Lockheed Martin, STFC/FGE

• D = 6 PDRA + 11 DPhil

Stalker T6 tunnel

High density tunnel

Low density tunnel

10x5 – Imperial

o Nonequilibrium boundary layers – EPSRC

o Transpiration cooling –EPSRC, Rolls Royce

• Wind-on Jan 2017• First industry contract Dec 2017• Annual turnover ~£400k• Commercial / industry wind engineering sector • New research programmes, • D = 3 permanent staff, 2 PDRA + 1 PhD

Communicating strategy and policy

➢ Build on existing visibility

o Odqvist Laboratory (Dec 2014)

o EPSRC Capital Strategy Workshop (July 2015)

o Wind tunnel roadmap (Sept 2015)

o UKCRIC workshop (March 2016)

o ATI conference (Nov. 2017), ATI SAG (Feb. 2019)

o UKRI Infrastructure Roadmap (Spring 2019)

➢ Second half of grant period focusing on communication

o National: better uptake by user community, publicity

o International:

o EuHIT: International Collaboration on Turbulence Research (?)

o Australia: ‘NWTF’ workshop April 11-12, 2019, Melbourne

o JAXA Chofu workshop Nov 12-14, 2019, Tokyo 13

Proposal for National ConsortiumAustralia

➢Academic-led U. Melbourne

❖U. Adelaide, DST, RMIT, Monash, U. Sydney,

U. Tasmania, U. Queensland

➢ Industry stakeholders

❖Boeing Australia, BAE, Ford, Lockheed Martin, GM Holden +

defence-industry SME’s

➢New campus, flagship facility, Fisherman’s Bend (UoM)

❖Co-location of industry, education and research

❖Shared capital + operating costs for robustness

❖Staff development and mobility14

Proposal for tunnel networkJapan

➢ JAXA Chofu, Tokyo

❖Extensive range of tunnels

❖Advanced instrumentation

❖University interactions: Tohoku

➢ Interaction UK / Japanese facilities

156.5 x 5.5 m low-speed tunnelNASA CRM in 2 x 2 m transonic tunnel

UKRI Infrastructure Roadmap

Unique Value Proposition

17

Industry-University Wind-Tunnel Network

• Open a dialogue to articulate the industry needs / gaps• Help UK industry enable opportunities that are available• Seize the skills generation and learn from the lessons in setting-up a

common UK community activity• Explore the opportunities for similar developments within a group of

industry wind tunnels taken to be of strategic importance• Exploit simulation / experiment complementarity – databases• Reinforce the UK Aero industry case for the value (and opportunities) of

NWTF and provide shaping of future proposal for NWTF+• Extension to other sectors – environment, automotive

Next steps

➢ Appointment of new full-time Project Manager – in progress

➢ National Research Facility – EPSRC??

➢ Transparent review process of constituent tunnels – based on uptake, primarily by external researchers

➢ NWTF ➾

o Demonstration of need – establish user community

o Tunnel business models – use of tunnel income for repairs, unfunded research access – sustainability

o Establishment of on-going mechanism for NWTF+

➢ Forum for NWTF / industry / gov’t interaction – Dec 11, 2019

o Industry engagement e.g. ATI – Boeing / QinetiQ / ATI model18

UKRI Infrastructure Roadmap

"We want to build on existing R&D investments that have allowed the UK to remain at the forefront of aerodynamic and fluid mechanics research such as the distributed network of wind tunnels that are currently managed collectively as the National Wind Tunnel Facility. Increasingly, the role of wind tunnels (and other large test infrastructures) is not so much to test the scaled physical model, but to obtain test data that allows model validation, so that more of the design and validation can be done by computational modelling (such as creating digital twins), rather than experimental means.

National Wind Tunnel Facility:An existing capital investment of £14.5M in 2015 developed and upgraded a suite of 17 national wind tunnel facilities (NWTF) to provide a service that is greater than the sum of its individual tunnels and researchers.The next phase of investment would provide a testing and expertise infrastructure driving a paradigm shift in the way experimental research is approached, creating a strategically important infrastructure as recommended in the community wind tunnel roadmap."