Development of a short duration hypersonic test facility at Universiti Tenaga Nasional

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a short duration hypersonic test facility at the College of Engineering, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN). The facility is the first of its kind in Malaysia. The facility will allow various researches to be done in the field of high speed supersonic and hypersonic flows. It is designed so that it can be used as a free piston tunnel, shock tube and shock tunnel. The maximum mach number obtainable depends on the type of the driver and driven gases. It is shown that a mach number of 4 can be achieved if CO2 is used as the driven gas and Helium is used as the driver gas with diaphragm pressure ratio of 74.76. Experimental measurements were performed with the facility working as shock tube. The barrel temperature was measured using in-house developed fast response surface junction E-type thermocouple while the pressure was measured using fast response quartz pressure transducer. The pressure and temperature results clearly show the formation of shock wave and its reflection causing the pressure and temperature to increase rapidly.