HOME
*





Eight-Foot High Speed Tunnel (Hampton, Virginia)
The Eight-Foot High Speed Tunnel, also known as Eight-Foot Transonic Tunnel, was a wind tunnel located in Building 641 of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. It was a National Historic Landmark. The tunnel was completed in 1936 at a cost of $36,266,000. Because of its high speed and Bernoulli's principle, the pressure in the test section is much lower than that in the rest of the tunnel. This required a structure that could withstand an inward force due to the pressure difference. Instead of steel construction, it was built from reinforced concrete with walls up to 1 ft (0.3 m) thick. This resulted in an "igloo-like" structure at the test section. The wind tunnel was designed as a single-return tunnel capable of moving air at speeds up to a Mach number up to 0.75. It was powered by an electric motor. It was repowered to to give Mach number 1 capability in 1945. In 1947, the speed was increased to a Mach number of 1.2 with the installation of a contoured nozzl ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Hampton, Virginia
Hampton () is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 137,148. It is the List of cities in Virginia, 7th most populous city in Virginia and List of United States cities by population, 204th most populous city in the nation. Hampton is included in the Hampton Roads United States metropolitan area, Metropolitan Statistical Area (officially known as the Virginia Beach–Norfolk–Newport News, VA–NC MSA) which is the List of United States metropolitan statistical areas by population, 37th largest in the United States, with a total population of 1,799,674 (2020). This area, known as "America's First Region", also includes the independent cities of Chesapeake, Virginia, Chesapeake, Virginia Beach, Virginia, Virginia Beach, Newport News, Virginia, Newport News, Norfolk, Virginia, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Virginia, Portsmou ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Area Rule
The Whitcomb area rule, named after NACA engineer Richard Whitcomb and also called the transonic area rule, is a design procedure used to reduce an aircraft's drag at transonic speeds which occur between about Mach 0.75 and 1.2. For supersonic speeds a different procedure called the supersonic area rule, developed by NACA aerodynamicist Robert Jones, is used. Transonic is one of the most important speed ranges for commercial and military fixed-wing aircraft today, with transonic acceleration an important performance requirement for combat aircraft and which is improved by reductions in transonic drag. Description At high-subsonic flight speeds, the local speed of the airflow can reach the speed of sound where the flow accelerates around the aircraft body and wings. The speed at which this development occurs varies from aircraft to aircraft and is known as the critical Mach number. The resulting shock waves formed at these zones of sonic flow cause a sudden increase in drag ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Historic American Engineering Record In Virginia
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries. History is also an academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history as an end in itself, as well as its usefulness to give perspective on the problems of the p ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tunnels Completed In 1936
A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube construction techniques rather than traditional tunnel boring methods. A tunnel may be for foot or vehicular road traffic, for rail traffic, or for a canal. The central portions of a rapid transit network are usually in the tunnel. Some tunnels are used as sewers or aqueducts to supply water for consumption or for hydroelectric stations. Utility tunnels are used for routing steam, chilled water, electrical power or telecommunication cables, as well as connecting buildings for convenient passage of people and equipment. Secret tunnels are built for military purposes, or by civilians for smuggling of weapons, contraband, or people. Special tunnels, such as wildlife crossings, are built to allow wildlife to cross human-made barriers safely. Tu ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Wind Tunnels
Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft will fly. NASA uses wind tunnels to test scale models of aircraft and spacecraft. Some wind tunnels are large enough to contain full-size versions of vehicles. The wind tunnel moves air around an object, making it seem as if the object is flying. Most of the time, large powerful fans suck air through the tube. The object being tested is held securely inside the tunnel so that it remains stationary. The object can be an aerodynamic test object such as a cylinder or an airfoil, an individual component, a small model of the vehicle, or a full-sized vehicle. The air moving around the stationary object shows what would happen if the object was moving through the air. The motion of the air can be studied in different ways; smoke or dye can be p ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Buildings And Structures In Hampton, Virginia
A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for a wide number of factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, land prices, ground conditions, specific uses, prestige, and aesthetic reasons. To better understand the term ''building'' compare the list of nonbuilding structures. Buildings serve several societal needs – primarily as shelter from weather, security, living space, privacy, to store belongings, and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical division of the human habitat (a place of comfort and safety) and the ''outside'' (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful). Ever since the first cave paintings, buildings have also become objects or canvasses of much ar ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Historic American Engineering Record
Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) is a division of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) responsible for administering the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). These programs were established to document historic places in the United States. Records consist of measured drawings, archival photographs, and written reports, and are archived in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Historic American Buildings Survey In 1933, NPS established the Historic American Buildings Survey following a proposal by Charles E. Peterson, a young landscape architect in the agency. It was founded as a constructive make-work program for architects, draftsmen and photographers left jobless by the Great Depression. It was supported through the Historic Sites Act of 1935. Guided by field instructions from Washington, D.C., the first HABS recorders were tasked with docume ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Supersonic Aircraft
A supersonic aircraft is an aircraft capable of supersonic flight, that is, flying faster than the speed of sound (Mach number 1). Supersonic speed, Supersonic aircraft were developed in the second half of the twentieth century. Supersonic aircraft have been used for research and military purposes, but only two supersonic aircraft, the Tupolev Tu-144 (first flown on December 31, 1968) and the Concorde (first flown on March 2, 1969), ever entered service Supersonic transport, for civil use as airliners. Fighter aircraft, Fighter jets are the most common example of supersonic aircraft. The aerodynamics of supersonic flight is called compressible flow because of the compression (physics), compression associated with the shock waves or "sonic boom" created by any object traveling faster than sound. Aircraft flying at speeds above Mach 5 are called Hypersonic flight, hypersonic aircraft. History The first aircraft to fly supersonic in level flight was the American Bell X-1 exper ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Transonic
Transonic (or transsonic) flow is air flowing around an object at a speed that generates regions of both subsonic and supersonic airflow around that object. The exact range of speeds depends on the object's critical Mach number, but transonic flow is seen at flight speeds close to the speed of sound (343 m/s at sea level), typically between Mach 0.8 and 1.2. The issue of transonic speed (or transonic region) first appeared during World War II. Pilots found as they approached the sound barrier the airflow caused aircraft to become unsteady. Experts found that shock waves can cause large-scale separation downstream, increasing drag and adding asymmetry and unsteadiness to the flow around the vehicle. Research has been done into weakening shock waves in transonic flight through the use of anti-shock bodies and supercritical airfoils. Most modern jet powered aircraft are engineered to operate at transonic air speeds. Transonic airspeeds see a rapid increase in drag from a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Wind Tunnel
Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft will fly. NASA uses wind tunnels to test scale models of aircraft and spacecraft. Some wind tunnels are large enough to contain full-size versions of vehicles. The wind tunnel moves air around an object, making it seem as if the object is flying. Most of the time, large powerful fans suck air through the tube. The object being tested is held securely inside the tunnel so that it remains stationary. The object can be an aerodynamic test object such as a cylinder or an airfoil, an individual component, a small model of the vehicle, or a full-sized vehicle. The air moving around the stationary object shows what would happen if the object was moving through the air. The motion of the air can be studied in different ways; smoke or dye can be ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]