Tunnel 9 receives a much needed refresh

  • Published
  • By Deidre Ortiz
  • AEDC/PA
After three busy years of testing, which includes the longest running test since becoming a U.S. Air Force operated facility, AEDC Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9, at the remote operating location in White Oak, Md., is going through a seven-month major maintenance event. 

Dan Marren, site director of Tunnel 9, explained that an extensive outage for maintenance occurs at the facility once every five to ten years.

"Maintenance procedures require an extended outage to maintain, repair and replace components that are rarely opened up," he said.

Though testing is halted during an outage, the staff at Tunnel 9 remained hard at work. According to Marren, all of the operational personnel are also directly involved in the maintenance and refurbishment of the facility.

"At first glance, it may seem that this would be a great time for the crew to take a much needed break after such a sustained period of high operations tempo," he said. "Unfortunately, that is not the case since the same operations crew is also the maintenance crew at White Oak. 

"Instead system engineers, technicians and support staff shift gears to move from direct customer support to a myriad of activities aimed at getting the facility back to high readiness for the next decade of customers."

The test engineering staff has been busy planning for the technical part of the return-to-service test, Fiscal Year 2016 customer testing and business development for the future. Marren stated in their "down-time" the engineers are reinventing instruments, diagnostics and methods to bring an even better knowledge base to customers. 

"The test engineering team has been developing their temperature sensitive paint capabilities,   boundary-layer transition diagnostics and new high Mach velocimetry techniques," he said.

And if things were not busy enough, summer is the time when workforce development efforts are in full swing at Tunnel 9, and a group of undergraduate students work together with graduate researchers and staff on significant advances in testing and evaluation technology and analysis.

"I think I can safely say the team at White Oak is looking forward to getting back to testing every day, which in many respects might actually seem like a respite to the long and often unpredictable nature of this type of maintenance activity," Marren said.

The maintenance project is scheduled to come to an end by September, when return to service activity will commence bringing Tunnel 9 back online just in time to support a new set of DOD customers and a facility upgrade expanding the test envelope to Mach 18.