Mar. 7, 2016
The Scirocco Plasma Wind Tunnel, one of CIRA's symbol plants, is back on. Its work schedule includes tests on thermal protection materials for NASA and test campaigns commissioned by the Chinese Space Agency, by the University of Queensland, and by the European Space Agency
The Scirocco Plasma Wind Tunnel, one of CIRA's symbol plants, is operative once more, as announced by the Campania-based research centre, with headquarters in Capua. The Scirocco Plasma Wind Tunnel was returned to work after a long period of extraordinary maintenance for technological updates on one of its main subsystems: the electric arc.
This is the part of the system in which, using enough power to light up a city of 80,000 inhabitants (70 MW), a lightning is produced lasting several minutes, heating the air up to 10,000 degrees Celsius. The goal is to reproduce the critical conditions to which thermal protection materials of spacecraft are submitted when re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
The success of this first test naturally required the activation of all the subsystems of the tunnel, including the Vacuum System, the Injection System, Process Gas Regulation, and Cooling Water Circulation, giving out a clear sign that the entire Scirocco plant is now ready to return to its normal working schedule.
As early as in the next few months, the Scirocco tunnel will be involved in an intense programme partly focusing on previous commitments and partly on new, upcoming requests. For instance, its work schedule includes tests on thermal protection materials for NASA and test campaigns commissioned by the Chinese Space Agency, by the University of Queensland, and by the European Space Agency (ESA).
The Scirocco plant will soon be able to respond with maximum efficiency to requests of simulations of thermal and pressure loads typical of return to Earth. In this case, the thermal flows that hit spacecraft protection systems are incredibly high, and CIRA's hypersonic tunnel is the only one that can reproduce these flows in order to test sufficiently large samples of materials used to allow spacecraft to return from Mars.
“Scirocco, CIRA's plasma wind tunnel, is the world's largest and best-performing plant for the testing of thermal shields for spacecraft. The only tunnel this size that can create an air flow around the thermal shield at the same speeds that occur when re-entering our atmosphere, 14 times the speed of sound, and temperatures of several thousand degrees Celsius”, commentsCIRA's president, Luigi Carrino at the end of the switch-on test. He adds, “Just over a year ago, in close strategic coordination with the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research and with the Italian Space Agency, and with the support of our Members, we started a systematic reorganisation programme at CIRA that is showing its first results”.
According to Roberto Battiston, President of the Italian Space Agency, a major stockholder of CIRA, “turning the plasma tunnel back on is another sign that CIRA is once more an international reference for aerospace research. This is why industries and agencies from all over the world come to Capua to carry out crucial tests to define standards and certifications at an international level. An important asset for Italian industry, which must face serious rivals in a global, competitive market”.