Wind tunnel, device for producing a controlled stream of air in order to study the effects of movement through air or resistance to moving air on models of aircraft and other machines and objects. Provided that the airstream is properly controlled, it is immaterial whether the stationary model under testing is designed to move through the air, as an aircraft, or to withstand wind pressures while standing in place, as a building.
In open-ended wind tunnels of the early 20th century, air traveled slowly through a large-bore section of the tunnel, was accelerated in the nozzlelike test section, and slowed again in the large-bore diffuser section before being released into the atmosphere. Because little control could be exercised over the pressure, temperature, and humidity of the air in such an open-circuit tunnel, it was supplanted by a closed-circuit design in which air blown through the test section was contained in the circular or rectangular tunnel, passed through fans, and cycled back to the test section with the aid of turning vanes. Air velocity is controlled by changing the speed of the rotating fans or by adjusting the angle of the fan blades. In high-velocity tunnels, water-cooling systems are installed in the low-speed sections to cool the recycled air.
Wind tunnels are classified as low-speed or high-speed; they are further classified as subsonic (80 percent of the speed of sound), transonic (about the speed of sound), supersonic (up to 6 times the speed of sound), hypersonic (6 to 12 times the speed of sound), and hypervelocity (over 12 times the speed of sound). To duplicate temperatures of flight at speeds of 10,000 miles (16,000 km) per hour and more, the test air must be heated well above the melting point of ordinary structural materials; consequently, such tunnels are operated on an impulse principle and only for extremely short periods of time on the order of a few thousandths of a second.
Applications of wind-tunnel research range from routine testing of airframes to fundamental research on the boundary layer, the slow-moving layer of air adjacent to any wind-exposed body surface. Measurements of air pressure and other characteristics at many points on the model yield information about how the total wind load is distributed. In addition to aircraft and spacecraft, aerodynamic studies in wind tunnels have been highly profitable devices for solving design problems in automobiles, boats, trains, bridges, and building structures.