Chennai. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has successfully completed the first blow down test of the newly constructed Trisonic Wind Tunnel at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre.
The trisonic wind tunnel is a system used to simulate spacecraft re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere by evaluating the aerodynamic design, forces and load distribution of spacecraft and maintaining pressure and acoustic levels on scaled models. helps in
ISRO in a statement released on its official website said that the total length of the tunnel is approximately 160 meters and its maximum width has been measured at 5.4 meters. The tunnel can be used for testing various space vehicles in three flight regimes, including below the speed of sound, above the speed of sound and above the speed of sound.
Due to its use in three flight regimes, it has been named Trisonic Wind Tunnel. According to ISRO, the tunnel can simulate flight conditions from 0.2 times the speed of sound (68 meters per second) to four times the speed of sound (1,360 meters per second).
In maintaining the speed of one vehicle below the speed of sound, the second vehicle can be kept equal to the speed of sound and the third can be done in maintaining more than the speed of sound and that is why it is named Trisonic Wind Tunnel. The blow down was formally commissioned by ISRO Chairman S Somnath.
The test was also witnessed by senior ISRO officials including Vikram Sarabhai Space Center Director S Unnikrishnan Nair, Liquid Propulsion Systems Center Director V Narayanan and ISRO Inertial Systems Unit Director Sam Dayal Dev. According to ISRO, this huge structure has been built with the use of several hundred tonnes of steel.
The Trisonic Wind Tunnel was implemented through M/s Tata Projects India Limited with the help of industries across the country. ISRO said that the trisonic wind tunnel is a major step towards India’s increasing self-reliance in the aerospace sector.
