Alongside the
wind tunnel, the facility also incorporates a retail store, a biomechanics suite and a physiology suite.
The results were validated using a
wind tunnel test.
Wind Tunnel 3 is the altitude lab, where engineers can test vehicles at wind speeds of up to 120 km/h at up to 5,200 metres.
[7] carried out a series of
wind tunnel experiments on the mean and fluctuating wind pressures, in which they investigated the effects of the turbulence of approaching flow and the dome's geometry, that is, f/D and H/D, on the characteristics of the pressure field.
John Anderson, managing director of Air & Space at QinetiQ, said: "The
wind tunnel, which marks its 40th anniversary this year, has played a crucial role in the development of modern advanced aircraft, such as Boeing's 787 and 777X.
Mirko Kovac, a roboticist at Imperial College London who was not involved in the research, says that
wind tunnels such as this will help to improve the understanding of free-flight behaviours, "which are of particular importance in the study of flight dynamics and interaction principles when flying in turbulent flow".
"It's the dividing line between development and being ready to build, so you do all of your testing and simulation initially, you think you have a design that looks like it's going to go work, and then you go to the
wind tunnel and you verify with real air and real flow that you're seeing the results that you predicted in simulation and at that point then you're ready to go forward and start constructing large pieces of the aircraft."
The successful completion of the
wind tunnel tests as well as a comprehensive range of seismic and local climate studies lends further momentum to The Tower's development to the highest standards of quality and safety.
With the weather being a major challenge in the development of high-rises,
wind tunnel tests are important at the structural design stage as they help in defining the final height and design aspects of a project.