When it Rains It Pours

by Frank Quinto

September 10, 1998

For a Facility Manager, every day is different, unlike when I was a test manager. Then, there were two kinds of days; test days and non-test days. Some days as a facility manager I am putting out fires left and right. (You've heard the expression: When it rains, it pours!). Some days are calmer. Some of the emergencies I solve have to do with purchasing equipment parts for repairs. I get involved because I have a government credit card. I do a lot of ordering on the Internet. Once I had to drive to the hardware store and go through all the steps explaining that we are a tax exempt agency and that we should not be charged tax.

Other time's problems arise due to communication problems. Sometimes information doesn't get passed on. I serve as peacemaker moving the issues towards solutions.

I have to coordinate the schedule for my wind tunnel. To avoid a problem with the schedule, I have built in slack into the schedule. Sometimes, though, you don't have enough slack. If there is a conflict, we try to promise to complete our testing within an appropriate time. If the schedule slips, you have to call all the people that are affected by either moving the schedule forward or moving it backward. You have to get everyone to agree because if you don't the one person you don't reach will not be able to make his or her schedule fit the revision and then you have to start all over.

I coordinate a lot of meetings. Since I have become a Facility Manager the number of meetings I attend has doubled. Most of them are staff meetings. When I was a test manager there were one or two 15-minute meetings a day. They were called end of shift meetings, and we shared information as we changed shifts.

Now, I attend meetings of all the Facility Managers of the main facility. We get assigned things like Operations Plans for the Facility due Friday. Then I share that information with the staff at our facility. Then I have to attend priority meetings where we decide on the allocation of electrical power and high power air. Wind tunnels use a lot of power and a lot of high pressure air and so we prioritize based on the number of customers, the priorities, the schedules, and delays. This is interesting because you get to see what the other facilities are doing and how they handle problems that are similar to the ones you experience.

We are classified as a medium to small facility. We are a research facility and our schedule is fairly easy going, but we still have to meet the same requirements. The Low Turbulence Pressure Wind Tunnel is unique, the only one in the U.S. at least. It's two-dimensional. Most of our testing has to do with the information about an airfoil. The wing goes from wall to wall. This allows us to discover how to maximize the performance of an airfoil. When the question comes up, "What shape airfoil should we use?" The research results from this wind tunnel provide the answer. Most of the airfoil shapes that we test are for low speed transports. Most tunnels have some turbulence, which may not affect your test results. When you are doing airfoil testing you need low turbulence so that you can easily predict the airflow over the airfoil. The airfoils (a chunk of the wing) we test from leading edge to trailing edge are on the order of 2 to 3 feet. On a full-scale airplane they would be 10 to 20 feet. Most of the airfoils we test are for low speed transports.

We also test three-dimensional models like an airplane. Because of the size of our tunnel, which is 3 1/2' wide by 7 1/2' high and 7' long, we can only test aerospace vehicles like the space shuttle, the X-33 or the X-34 (stubby winged aerospace vehicles). Most wind tunnels are wider than narrower. This tunnel is the other way around, it has a taller and narrow test space. We can take a model (like the space shuttle) and test it in our tunnel then take it to a transonic tunnel and then take it to a supersonic tunnel. This means that you can test it at speeds all the way from 0 to Mach 6 with out having to build a new model.

The other reason our tunnel is so unique is because we do tests at very high Reynolds Numbers. We can test at up to ten atmospheres. You can consider that one atmosphere is 15 lbs. per square inch. The actual atmospheric pressure at sea level is 14.7 lbs. per square inch. We can pressurize our tunnel up to 150 p.s.i. We get near flight level Reynolds Numbers, in other words, the same flow conditions with a model that we would get with an airplane. What are Reynolds Numbers you ask? Well Reynolds Numbers describe a scaling effect. You make a scale model to put in the wind tunnel. When you shrink it down to fit the test section of the wind tunnel you must also do some thing to the airflow in the wind tunnel, such as using high pressure or cryogenic mode. This involves using a different gas at very low temperatures like -250 degrees F. When you reduce the temperature you reduce the spacing between the molecules down to the scale of the model.

Never a dull moment, but we get the job done!