India’s First Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel Test Facility

Context: 

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur has tested India’s first Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel Test Facility.

India’s First Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel Test Facility

• Funded by: Fund for Improvement in S&T Infrastructure (FIST) of the Department of Science & Technology (DST) with a sum of Rs 4.5 Crores in 2018.

• Developed by:  Aeronautical Research and Development Board (ARDB), the Department of Science and Technology (DST), and  Hypersonic Experimental Aerodynamics Laboratory (HEAL) of IIT-Kanpur.

Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel Test Facility

• About: The facility named S2 or ‘Jigarthanda’, is a 24-meter-long facility located at IIT-Kanpur’s Hypersonic Experimental Aerodynamics Laboratory (HEAL) within the Department of Aerospace Engineering.
• An expansion tunnel is an aerodynamic testing facility capable of generating high-energy test conditions with negligible or no ionisation for achieving the goal of high speeds for an aircraft.
• Function: The Facility can  generate flight speeds between 3-10 km/s, simulating the hypersonic condition usually  encountered during atmospheric entry of vehicles, asteroid entry, scramjet flights, and ballistic missiles.
  • The lower limit of the flight speed generated by the facility is three kilometers per second.

• Significance of Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel Test Facility

• • Help Existing Missions: S2 will help ISRO with its Gaganyaan mission and  to test the  Reusable Launch Vehicle and DRDO with its development of  hypersonic cruise missiles.
  • Boost the research ecosystem: It will enable more aerospace engineers and researchers to pursue hypersonic research.
  • Future missions: The research activities and data generated in the facility will serve as an input for optimization of existing vehicles as well as futuristic defense and Space Missions.
  • It will empower India’s space and Defence organizations with domestic hypersonic testing capabilities for critical projects and missions

News source: PIB

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