High-speed wind tunnels

When:

10 January 2015

10:30 Hour - 12:45 Hour

Event organizer:History of Engineering

Description

From the Wright brothers onwards, wind tunnels have been used to optimise the aerodynamic design of aircraft. As early as 1919, wind tunnel measurements were carried out in the Netherlands by the predecessor of today's National Aerospace Laboratory NLR.
After the Second World War, the government decided to support the aircraft industry, among other things, by building two new large wind tunnels in the transsonic and supersonic speed range (the HST and SST). These tunnels were technically very advanced in terms of design and measurement techniques used. The talk will explain why these tunnels were built and what solutions were found to a number of problems in the process.
From 1960, when the tunnels came into operation, these tunnels contributed to the development of Fokker aircraft, such as the F-28, the Fokker 100 and the Fokker 70 as well as international projects such as the Concorde, Airbus and the ARIANE Launcher. Even today, the HST, now under the management of the "German-Dutch Wind Tunnels" (DNW) Foundation, is used extensively for the benefit of the international aviation industry

10.30:00 Building open; reception with coffee
11:00 Lecture by ir. A. Elsenaar
11:45 Pause
12:15 Continuation of lecture and concluding discussion
12:45 End of meeting.

Speaker(s)

After studying aerospace engineering in Delft and Toronto, Bram Elsenaar joined the National Aerospace Laboratory where he eventually became responsible for all wind tunnel research. He also spent several years at the end of his career working on the Airbus A380 in Toulouse.
After retirement, he has been involved with the aerodynamic collection of the NLR Historical Museum Foundation. (See also the website via the link below). In that capacity, he recently wrote a book entitled: "0.2 < Ma < 4.0 - 50 Years High Speed Wind Tunnel Testing in The Netherlands"