The No. 19 Wind Tunnel at Farnborough: A Description of the Largest Supersonic Tunnel at the Royal Aircraft Establishment

A LARGE supersonic tunnel was completed several years ago at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough. A brief specification is as follows: the main working section has a cross section 18 inches square; the stagnation pressure can be varied from 0·1 to 2·8 atmospheres; it is driven by a seven‐stage, axial‐flow compressor with a pressure ratio range 1·1 to 2·3 which can absorb up to 7,000 h.p. for long runs. A perspective drawing of the plant is shown in FIG. 1 and the relation between Reynolds number and Mach number in FIG. 2.