Review
A country's comprehensive strength and international status depend to a great extent on its scientific and technological strength, especially the development of high-precision and cutting-edge technologies such as aerospace.
In the Science City of Huairou in the Arctic, there is a "detonation-driven ultra-high-speed high-enthalpy shock wave wind tunnel" - JF-22 wind tunnel. As the important weapon of the continent and the cradle of the aircraft, what is the superiority of the aircraft?
The strongest on the surface
A wind tunnel is a device that uses artificial generation and control of air flow to simulate the flow of gas around the aircraft to test and improve the aerodynamic effects of the aircraft.
The performance of the mainland's "JF-22" ultra-high-speed wind tunnel has reached a very terrifying level, and netizens ridiculed that the "general" is advanced, which can be shown, and this "general" is really not that simple.
The "JF-22" wind tunnel, with a total length of 167 meters, can blow out 30 times the speed of sound (CCTV reports, it may actually be higher than 35 times the speed of sound), and reproduce the air flow at an altitude of 40 to 100 kilometers, flying at 10 kilometers per second.
What is the concept of 30 times the speed of sound, 10,200 m/s, which is 36,720 km/h. The aircraft beyond Mach 5 has entered the hypersonic category, and Mach 30 has already entered the extreme hypersonic speed, which can almost escape the shackles of gravity and enter space to orbit the earth. The aircraft designed in this environment has the level of reaching anywhere in the world in one hour.
It is said that the American wind tunnel "LENS-X" can also reach Mach 30. But why, judging from performance indicators, the "JF-22" has been ahead of Europe and the United States for at least 20-30 years?
There are three main factors: the scale is large, the diameter of the continental airflow field is 2.5 meters, and the maximum diameter abroad is 1.5 meters; the time is long, at Mach 10, we reach 40 milliseconds, which is about several times higher than the advanced level of the same kind; the total temperature is high, the total pressure is high, and the performance is high, we can achieve 2500 degrees Celsius to 18000 degrees Celsius, and 100 atmospheres to 10000 atmospheres.
It consumes a lot of energy, but it is worth the money
Many people say that in the era of artificial intelligence, the energy consumption of chips is large, but in fact, the energy consumption of wind tunnels is not small, and a large amount of power resources are required to simulate the flight environment of 10 kilometers per second at high altitude on the surface.
It is reported that the effective driving power of the JF-22 wind tunnel has reached 15,000 megawatts, equivalent to 75% of the installed capacity of the Three Gorges (20,000 megawatts). Although the time of each test in the wind tunnel is less than one second, the "scaled model" needs at least tens of thousands of experiments in the wind tunnel, and it is estimated that a project will require millions of kilowatt-hours of electricity, and millions or even tens of millions of yuan according to the electricity bill. But compared to the value of the aircraft and the direct test of the real environment, it is much more cost-effective.
Tough start
The better the wind tunnel, the better the space vehicle, this is the consensus of scientists. As early as the 40s of the last century, mainland scientists Qian Xuesen and Guo Yonghuai deployed relevant research.
But under the conditions at that time, the wind tunnel research was very dangerous, because it was necessary to use hydrogen and oxygen combustion to create air flow, and the laboratory would explode every three or five times, and it would be blown up again and again, so after several generations of efforts, the wind tunnel research in the mainland has come to this day and has become the most powerful wind tunnel in the world.
Advanced aircraft
Today, the wind tunnel has become the heavy equipment of the mainland and the cradle of advanced aircraft. There is a saying that advanced aircraft are "blown" out in a wind tunnel.
For example, the mainland's advanced Dongfeng-17 hypersonic missile has a flight range of up to 2,500 kilometers and a speed of up to Mach 10. The YJ-21 anti-ship missile is also considered to be an "aircraft carrier killer" that can easily penetrate and strike aircraft carriers at a distance of 1,000 kilometers. The Dongfeng-27 reported on the Internet is said to have a longer range and a higher speed. The well-known J-20, Shenzhou spacecraft, C919 domestic large aircraft, and Long March series rockets all need to use wind tunnels.
epilogue
At present, the mainland not only has the world's most advanced wind tunnels, but also a world-class "wind tunnel group," and the test equipment involves military, civilian, aerospace, weapons and equipment, and high-tech fields. As for wind tunnels, it is a very objective fact that China has jumped to the "first place in the world".