India’s First Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel Test Facility
Context:
India’s first Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel Test Facility has been successfully pioneered and trialed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
Relevance:
GS03 (Science and technology)
Key highlights:
- This achievement puts India amongst a handful of countries with this advanced hypersonic testing capability.
- Named S2, it was indigenously designed and developed and is a valuable test facility for ongoing missions of ISRO and DRDO including Gaganyaan, RLV and hypersonic cruise missiles.
- The S2 also nicknamed as ‘Jigarthanda’, is a 24-meter-long facility located at IIT Kanpur’s Hypersonic Experimental Aerodynamics Laboratory (HEAL) within the Department of Aerospace Engineering.
- The development of the facility was supported by the Fund for Improvement in S&T Infrastructure (FIST) of the Department of Science & Technology (DST) with a sum of Rs 4.5 Crores in 2018.
- It is capable of generating flight speeds between 3-10 km/s, simulating the hypersonic condition.
- The implementation of the Hypersonic Test Facility in India will enable more aerospace engineers and researchers to pursue hypersonic research.
Facts for prelims:
- Hypervelocity: It is a very high velocity, roughly over 3,000 meters per second or Mach 8.8.
- Example: Most meteors are hypervelocity objects flying at many thousands of miles per hour.
- Hypersonic: A hypersonic speed is one that exceeds five times the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above.
