China is building the world's fastest wind tunnel to simulate hypersonic flight at speeds of up to 12 kilometers per second, which would enable a hypersonic flight from China to the west coast of the U.S. in less than 14 minutes, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
To meet the growing demand of China's hypersonic weapons development program, researchers aim to have the wind tunnel operational by about 2020, Zhao Wei, a deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of High Tem-perature Gas Dynamics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, was quoted as saying in the SCMP on Thursday.
Zhao is also a senior scientist working on the project.
"[The new tunnel] will boost the engineering application of hypersonic technology, mostly in military sectors, by duplicating the environment of extreme hypersonic flights, so problems can be discovered and solved on the ground," Zhao said as cited in the SCMP report.
The tunnel is being used to develop hypersonic aircraft since the facility can generate gusts as fast as the desired speed of the aircraft to simulate a flying environment.
Currently, the world's most powerful wind tunnel is the U.S. LENX-X facility in Buffalo, New York, which operates at speeds of 36,000 kilometers per hour, the UK Daily Mail reported.
China has conducted seven successful test flights of the hypersonic glider DF-ZF, the nation's most advanced hypersonic flying vehicle, which is capable of speeds of between Mach 5 and Mach 10, or five to 10 times the speed of sound, said the report.
