BOZEMAN, Mont. - Dakota Technologies, Inc. (DTI), located in Fargo, North Dakota, is developing technology to improve the accuracy and speed of wind tunnel testing for aeronautical designs. DTI recently initiated a cooperative research agreement with NASA¹s Langley Research Center on technology that will help revolutionize the way new airplane and spacecraft designs are evaluated in wind tunnels.

Wind tunnel testing for aeronautical designs goes back to at least 1901, when the Wright Brothers used a large blower fan to produce a 25 to 35 mph wind to test the lift of various plane and curved surfaces. These tests led to the successful design of the Wright¹s Kitty Hawk airplane. NASA currently conducts wind tunnel testing to support aeronautic research and development at three of its centers: Langley, Ames and Glenn.

Currently, wind tunnel tests involve the time-consuming and expensive installation of sensitive pressure taps on the surface of designs to be tested. In an attempt to develop improved testing methods, scientists at NASA¹s Langley Research Center have been conducting research on the use of pressure-sensitive paints to replace pressure taps. One difficulty with this approach has been finding efficient ways to image subtle differences in luminescence created by differential wind pressure on the painted models.

According to Cliff Obara, Aerospace Technologist, NASA Langley Research Center, global measurement techniques using pressure-sensitive paints offer the researcher large benefits in wind-tunnel data analysis. Not only do these techniques provide a better picture of the flow field around models; the time it takes to collect the data can provide a major cost savings over conventional methods.

Through the recently initiated project, Dakota Technologies and NASA Langley scientists are developing methods to overcome current problems with imaging pressure-sensitive paints. These include the need for reference images taken at constant pressure (so-called "wind-off" images) to correct for variations in the luminescence of the test object, and pixel-to-pixel sensitivity variations of the CCD cameras used to acquire the reference images. To address these problems, Dakota Technologies has developed an innovative way to record luminescence decay times following laser flashes on the painted surfaces.

This project is being conducted under a Space Act Agreement that was brokered by MSU TechLink, a technology transfer and commercialization center at Montana State University.

Back to Top