China is building another wind tunnel for tests at hypersonic speeds. The vacuum pump alone requires 13 MW, and thus can not be operated continuously by the local electricity grid, according to researchers.
There is a race between China, Russia and the United States over hypersonic weapons. They are evolving because they can both reach their target faster than conventional weapons and are harder to defend against. Hypersonic speed is usually defined as around five times faster than sound or more (5 mach), ie over 1,700 meters per second. Of course, the technology is also interesting for both military and civil aviation.
China has invested heavily in hypersonic research in recent years and built several wind tunnels to perform tests. The challenge with hypersonic speed is that a number of phenomena arise that cause the air itself to change character. Air-consuming ramjet engines, for example, are not usable at all, but rocket engines are required, according to FOI.
Vacuum pump at 13 MW
A new and relatively large tunnel has now been built, according to the Alibaba-owned and Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post (SCMP). But what it is called, and where it is located is secret.
The wind tunnel uses, among other things, a vacuum pump to simulate the conditions at high speed at high altitude. The pump has an output of 13 MW and is therefore too powerful to be able to run continuously on the local electricity grid, writes the project-engaged researcher Li Yanliang at the Beijing Institute of Space Long March Vehicle in the domestic scientifically reviewed journal Measurement & Control Technology, according to SCMP.
Instead, a dozen diesel-powered ship engines are used in conjunction with generators to generate the pump’s power requirements.
Li Yanliang does not want to answer how much power the entire plant requires.
900 MW total power requirement?
Professor Jiang Zonglin at the Institute of Mechanics in Beijing, on the other hand, estimates the need at 900 MW, which is in the order of magnitude of what a nuclear power plant generates. According to Zonglin, such a wind tunnel could produce a continuous air flow that simulates flying at 8 mach at an altitude of 40,000 meters and at a temperature above 2,700 degrees Celsius.
The world’s first continuous hypersonic wind tunnel called Tunnel A was one meter in diameter, based on German technology but built by the US Air Force in the 1950s. It was used to simulate flights between 7 and 10 mach and had an installed capacity of 57 MW, according to the SCMP.
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