Designed and built in-house, ViGYAN’s Low Speed Wind Tunnel is located at our main ViGYAN business site in Hampton, Virginia, in the Aero-Fluids Laboratory building behind our offices in the Langley Research and Development Park. The low-speed, open-return-design tunnel has been in operation since 1988, serving the aerodynamic testing requirements of government agencies and commercial customers, in addition to supporting ViGYAN’s own on-going, internal research and development.
The facility has recently undergone a major renovation of its model-support, electronics, and data-acquisition systems. The Tunnel’s state-of-the-art, automated systems provide excellent force and moment, pressure and flow-visualization capabilities.
Facility staffing includes engineers, model builders and technicians, model systems engineers, and instrumentation/data acquisition and reduction specialists.
The ViGYAN Wind Tunnel, built in 1985, is the only commercially available wind tunnel facility in the Hampton Roads region outside of NASA Langley. It has been a part of numerous advanced research and development efforts for NASA and ViGYAN. These include:
- Dr. D. Rao, one of the ViGYAN founders, worked on and received numerous patents during the 1980’s and 90’s in the area of vortex flows, vortex flaps, and delta wing aerodynamics. Much of this work was the result of ViGYAN’s Low Speed Wind Tunnel.
- All of the U.S. Mars landers supported by the NASA Langley Entry Descent and Landing (EDL) team have been tested in the ViGYAN Wind Tunnel. These include Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), Mars Phoenix, Mars Science Lab (Curiosity), and Mars Insight (2018).
- ViGYAN has been at the forefront in the development of advanced damping systems for sting-mounted wind tunnel models. Originally developed in the ViGYAN Wind Tunnel under an Air Force SBIR, these systems have been continuously improved and implemented in both NASA and Air Force wind tunnel facilities.
- Our most recent upgrade o the facility includes a Rotor Test Cell, used to develop the various pro[eller systems (PTS, Open Rotor, Rear Cone Thruster). The cell offers a safe enclosure for testing high-RPM propellers, data acquisition for measuring performance, and endurance testing.
- Current research initiatives include the Digital Bridge thermal anemometry system, advanced electric motor propeller testing hardware, a unique free-flying autonomous ProbBot wind tunnel survey system, and the Active Ride Improvement System (ARIS) for mitigating turbulence effects on small aircraft.
Capabilities & Expertise
ViGYAN provides an extensive array of associated support, including wind tunnel model fabrication, instrumentation and electronics, test engineering, and aerodynamics research expertise and computational fluid dynamics.
Tunnel and other engineering services are competitively priced and available via company purchase orders, credit card, or via the TEAMS support services contract at nearby NASA Langley Research Center.
Typical Wind Tunnel tests over the past several years have included:
- Architectural Screens
- Instrument & Sensors
- Spacecraft
- Typographical Models
- Inflatable Structures
- Aircraft
- Buildings
- Ground Vehicles
Ambient air is drawn through an inlet cage lined with densely woven filter material, which also serves to suppress external wind disturbances. The flow passes through a screened honeycomb, a long settling chamber, three woven, seamless, anti-turbulence screens and, finally, a nine-to-one contraction, before being discharged into the test chamber as a highly uniform, rectangular, cross-section jet four feet in width and three feet in height.
After traversing a five-foot length, the jet is collected by a bell-mouthed diffuser, conveyed through the fan and exhausted to atmosphere. These flow-conditioning measures reduce the turbulence level at the model position to less than 0.1 percent. Sphere tests have established the turbulence factor to be under 1.05.
The walk-in test chamber surrounding the test jet is large enough to accommodate two or three observers, with ear protection the only requirement. The free-jet configuration allows instant access to the model and facilitates flow visualization and photography from a variety of viewpoints. Alternate wall configurations (e.g., solid, semi-open, ground board, etc.) can be readily installed for special test requirements.
For models requiring changes in angle of attack or yaw angle, the model support mechanism allows the model attitude to be varied in the range of -10 to +90 degrees of pitch and -20 to +20 degrees of yaw, accurate to 0.1 degree. It features a closed-loop control system integrated with the data acquisition system for repeatable, efficient conduct of testing operations.