The University of Southern Queensland is home to the longest duration supersonic to hypersonic wind tunnel in Australia, a key tool in national and international research into aerospace vehicles.
The tunnel allows UniSQ researchers to conduct cutting-edge investigations in areas such as hypersonic aerodynamics, free-flight aerodynamics, supersonic combustion, proximal body separation, heat transfer, hypersonic control, and fluid-structure-interaction experiments.
This work is supported through a wide range of state-of-the-art high speed flow visualisation techniques and instrumentation methods. Utilising a range of state-of-the-art measurements, including in-house developed instrumentation, the flow conditions are well characterised, and the models/test objects are measured with high fidelity.
The facility itself, a Ludwieg tube, consists of a 16m long, 130mm honed internal tube, which utilises a free piston compression process to achieve the test conditions.
The facility has nozzles ranging from Mach 2 to Mach 7, enabling a wide range of flight regimes to be investigated. Each nozzle can also be operated with a range of stagnation pressures and temperatures.
This flexibility and precision in hypersonic and supersonic flow testing makes the University of Southern Queensland Wind Tunnel facility the premier facility of its type in Australia.
To learn more, contact the Hypersonics and Rocketry team.
