In 1972 the facility took on simulations to explain window failures in Boston’s new John Hancock Tower. Following the project’s success, an initial design evaluation assignment was awarded to establish the wind effects on the facade and at ground level for the Sears Tower (now the Willis Tower) in Chicago, along with a number of other ground studies such as radome housings, the World Trade Center Towers in New York, antenna configurations, galloping power transmission lines, and tall structures in Cincinnati, Columbus, Orlando, Toledo, and Boston.
A heavily used icon While its systems are showing their age, the tunnel is still heavily used as a valuable research and teaching tool.
One of the most unusual tests in the Wright Brother’s Wind Tunnel was conducted in 2007. A 130 million-year-old fossil of a four-winged “microraptor” had been discovered in China. To determine how this unusual beast used its wings, the NOVA television program commissioned a replica of the creature and then, working with AeroAstro, tested it in the tunnel. The results were featured in the 2008 NOVA program “The Four-Winged Dinosaur.”
“There’s a strong need for the tunnel for student projects,” says Professor Mark Drela, who’s been using the facility since he was a student in the early 1980s. “A large fraction of undergrad thesis and coursework is done there. While we can do a lot of computer modeling, the faculty still find the tunnel extremely important.”
Professor Dave Darmofal agrees. “I think it’s safe to say that over at least the last dozen years, virtually every AeroAstro student has been inside the WBWT and used it in multiple classes: for example, Unified Engineering, Aerodynamics, Experimental Projects, and Flight Vehicle Dynamics,” he says.
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AEROASTRO 2011-2012