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RAT team member performs a magnetic particle tests on welds.


World’s largest wind tunnel one step closer to reactivation

RAT team member performs a magnetic particle tests on welds.

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Pictured left to right are AEDC Woman’s Club members Kelly Doyle, Karen Todaro, Suzie Schultz, and speaker and artist Tracy H. Sugg with her sculpture and Hudson River School style oil painting at the AEDCWC meeting Sept. 1 at the Arnold Lakeside Club. Sugg’s sculptures and bronze monuments can be viewed on her website www.tracyHsugg.com. (Photo provided)
An AEDC craftsman applies adhesive to bond foam seal to a spacer for one of the axial flow compressors used to run the large wind tunnels at AEDC. A two-man Blade Shop has been heading up the repair of the rotor blades and spacers for the axial flow compressors in the AEDC Propulsion Wind Tunnel facility. (Photo provided)
To show its size, an AEDC craftsman stands beside compressor blades in the bell mouth of one of the Propulsion Wind Tunnel facility compressors. The Complex has a Blade Shop that leads repair of the rotor blades and spacers for the compressors in PWT. (Photo provided)
Temperature sensors and transducers are fabricated and installed on test models in the Aero-thermal Measurements Lab (ATML) at AEDC. ATML staff Randall Moon, Annette Painter and Stuart Coulter, pictured left to right, view heat flux sensors and model hardware through microscopes used in the lab. (Photo by Rick Goodfriend)
This is an example of one of the models instrumented with heat flux sensors in the Aero-thermal Measurements Lab. The lab supports testing of thermal protection systems, material sample ablation, boundary layer transition and roughness effects, and protuberance heating. (Photo by Rick Goodfriend)
The compact design and 90 degree offset of the new bulkhead feedthrough assembly saves valuable space inside each enclosure. (Photo provided)
The feedthrough assemblies for the Test Article Control System (TACS) and Data Acquisition System (DAS) used at the 16-foot transonic (16T) wind tunnel were recently replaced, saving AEDC more than $1 million. Pictured is a new feedthrough undergoing vacuum testing in the Space Systems Test Facility (SSTF) Lab at AEDC. (Photo provided)
This is an example of a new disconnect panel for the 16-foot transonic wind tunnel (16T) Test Article Control System (TACS) and Data Acquisition System (DAS). One panel would usually take at least a month or two to complete in-house for $1,300 but is now being completed for $300 in just two weeks. (Photo provided)
Terry Rayfield, ATA Senior Controls Engineer, at right, and Dale Shultz, instrument technician, work on putting terminal strips into one of the new disconnect panels for the Propulsion Wind Tunnel facility 16-foot transonic wind tunnel (16T). The disconnect panels, which are part of the 16T Test Article Control System (TACS) and Data Acquisition System (DAS), are used to provide a clean interface between system input/output hardware and field devices. (Photo provided)
Pictured during installation is the mechanism in the Propulsion Wind Tunnel Facility four-foot Transonic Wind Tunnel (4T) Captive Trajectory Support (CTS) system. The newly designed and fabricated mechanism controls the movement of the test model during a store separation test. (Photo by Rick Goodfriend)
Randy Vinke, an ATA electrician with the Propulsion Wind Tunnel (PWT) Facility Test Operations group, installs wires for the interface panels that are used to connect the test model instrumentation to a data system. The installation occurs in the PWT four-foot Transonic Wind Tunnel (4T) Captive Trajectory Support (CTS) system, which contains a newly designed and fabricated mechanism that enables a test model to have six degrees of motion: pitch, roll, yaw, axial, horizontal and vertical. The CTS is used to conduct staging and store separation testing. (Photo by Rick Goodfriend)
Dennis O’Dear (left) and Keith Gipson (bottom, right), both ATA outside machinists, install newly designed and fabricated flexible nozzle actuators in the Propulsion Wind Tunnel four-foot transonic wind tunnel (4T) at AEDC. The actuators are electromechanically driven ball-screw jacks which move the flexible top and bottom plates in the 4T tunnel closer together providing variable Mach numbers or wind speeds during a test. (Photo by Rick Goodfriend)