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China now has the world’s most powerful hypersonic wind tunnel

  • The ‘world-leading’ JF-22 can simulate extreme flight conditions at Mach 30
  • Facility will play key role in developing Beijing’s hypersonic weapons programme and passenger air travel

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The JF-22, located in Beijing, can simulate extreme flight conditions at 30 times the speed of sound. Photo: handout
Stephen Chenin Beijing
After five years of construction, the most powerful wind tunnel on the planet has roared to life in China’s capital – a facility that will be key to advancing Beijing’s hypersonic ambitions.

Located in the mountainous Huairou district of northern Beijing, the JF-22 wind tunnel is 4 metres (13 feet) in diameter and can generate air flow speeds up to 10km (6.2 miles) per second, according to a final evaluation conducted on May 30.

That makes it the largest and fastest wind tunnel in the world, capable of simulating hypersonic flight conditions up to Mach 30, according to the Institute of Mechanics, the owner of the facility.

The tunnel will “support the research and development of China’s space transport system and hypersonic aircraft”, the institute said in a statement on Friday.

By comparison, the Mach 10 tunnel at Nasa’s Langley Research Centre in the United States, a primary hypersonic test facility, has a test section diameter of nearly 0.8 metres.

A larger test section enables researchers to put larger aircraft models or even an entire weapon into the wind tunnel to obtain more accurate flight data.

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