Cool airflow research

摘要

The mood is intense, all eyes fixed on desktop computer screens or hanging video monitors. The only sound is the occasional click of a computer keyboard. It looks like a small version of the NASA control room in Houston, where flight controllers handle hurtling spaceships tens of thousands of kilometres away. Here, too, the staff is controlling an object in an inhospitable atmosphere - nitrogen gas chilled to minus 160 ℃ - but the control room is in Koln, Germany, and the object is a stationary model aircraft in the next building. This is the European Transonic Wind tunnel or ETW. It went into operation in 1993 as a cooperative effort of the governments of Germany, France, Britain and the Netherlands. Its purpose is to simulate the effects of flight for the purposes of aircraft developers.