The testing tube is roughly twice as large as comparable facilities in the West, with a diameter of 80cm (2.6 ft).
" have built the world's largest free-piston driven expansion tube wind tunnel with high enthalpy," said Lyu Zhiguo, the project team leader of the Hypervelocity Aerodynamics Institute under the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Centre in Mianyang. Enthalpy is a measure of the amount of heat in the air.
According to Lyu's team, the piston endured numerous demanding, repeated tests without suffering any damage because of a special construction design and the usage of novel materials. To research flying at hypervelocity, or speeds more than Mach 5 , the Soviet Union and the United States constructed a huge number of wind tunnels during the Cold War.