NASA performed pioneering tests using unsteady Pressure Sensitive Paint on a supercritical wing in the Transonic Dynamics Tunnel, advancing wind tunnel capabilities for future aircraft design.
Why it matters. Aerospace engineers and researchers will benefit from improved wind tunnel testing methods, potentially leading to more efficient and advanced aircraft technologies.
Left: The Benchmark Supercritical Wing not illuminated in unsteady Pressure Sensitive Paint inside the Transonic Dynamics Tunnel at NASA’s Langley Research Center.
In a first-of-its-kind test in NASA Langley’s Transonic Dynamics Tunnel, researchers used unsteady Pressure Sensitive Paint to study how air flows around a standard wind tunnel model known as the Benchmark Supercritical Wing. As the team observed the test, the paint’s special capabilities made the model wing glow pink-purple when exposed to special ultraviolet lights, while high-speed cameras cap…
Unsteady pressure sensitive paint is a specialized coating that varies in brightness according to how much pressure the air flow applies to the wing. High-speed cameras capture those changes, providing data for computer models. For years, NASA researchers at centers including Langley and the agency’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley have been working to integrate the paint into…
