Gas Turbine Facilities – Transonic
Oxford Turbine Research Facility
The Oxford Turbine Research Facility (OTRF) is a major test facility. It was designed and built by the department of engineering science for the Ministry of Defence (MOD-DERA), and operated on their Pyestock and Farnborough sites for about twenty years.
Oxford Rotor Facility
The Oxford Rotor Facility (ORF) is being used to study tip and rim sealing leakage flows as well as disc cavity flows and heat transfer.
Transient Heat Transfer Facility
Transient Heat Transfer Facility (THTF) is a new facility capable of reproducing 3-D full-scale flow conditions in a large civil aero engine high-pressure turbine segment cavity, at true cruise secondary air system temperatures, pressures and mass-flows.
Annular Sector Heat Transfer Facility
The Annular Sector Heat Transfer Facility achieves metal effectiveness measurements on engine parts at reduced temperature but the correct Reynolds and Mach numbers.
High Speed Linear Cascade
The High Speed Linear Cascade (HSLC) is a blow down test facility, capable of producing engine-representative Reynolds and Mach numbers for investigating tip clearance flows.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Rig
The Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) rig is a modular, blow-down wind tunnel with a variable Mach number (up to 1.6) with the working section of 500x200mm.) It is equipped with a range of hardware for detailed aerodynamics and heat transfer measurements.
High Speed PSP Rig
The High Speed PSP rig was designed and commissioned to obtain high subsonic flow around a spanwise uniform aerofoil. It is a blowdown test facility with a scaled single blade passage modelled out of Perspex for unhindered visibility of the aerofoil.
Nozzle Guide Vane Capacity Facility
The Nozzle Guide Vane (NGV) Capacity Facility is an engine-parts facility at the University of Oxford for high technology-readiness-level research and for engine component validation.
Gas Turbine Facilities – Low Speed
Low Speed Heat Transfer Rigs
The institute has several low speed heat transfer rigs (wind tunnels), which are used for heat transfer measurements.
Combustor-Turbine Interaction Rig
The Oxford Combustor-Turbine Interaction (CTI) rig employs an upstream combustor simulator to produce engine realistic approach flow conditions for a large scale, two-passage NGV cascade test section.
Hypersonic Facilities
T6 Stalker Tunnel
The T6 Stalker Tunnel (T6) will become Europe’s highest speed wind tunnel, capable of producing flows in excess of 20 km/s. It is a multi-mode facility, capable of operation either as reflected shock tunnel, an expansion tunnel or a shock tube.
Low Density Tunnel
The Low Density Tunnel (LDT) is rarefied flow facility, with the ability to produce flows with high Knudsen numbers representative of those experienced in the slip regime.
Hypersonic Facilities – Low Mach Number
High Density Tunnel
The High Density Tunnel (HDT) is a reconfigured and upgraded facility from the original RAE shock tube, acquired by the University of Oxford in 2012.
Other Facilities
Probe Calibration Facilities
The institute also has a number of Probe calibration facilities. These include a new high Reynolds free jet rig and the recirculating low 9 by 3 supersonic tunnel from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) for transonic flows.
Seals Rigs
The seals rigs include the high speed blowdown; the stiffness rig and the high speed tribology rig.
Cold Driven Shock Tube
The Cold Driven Shock Tube (CDST) is a double diaphragm, reflected shock tube facility, designed to provide controlled temperatures and pressures up to 1500 K and 150 bar.
High Heat Flux Rig
The High-Heat Flux measurement facility is used in the development of novel heat sink components for nuclear fusion tokamaks.
Engine Component Aerothermal Facility
This is a new engine-parts facility at the University of Oxford for high technology-readiness-level research, new technology demonstration, and for engine component validation.
Transonic Calibration Tunnel
The Transonic Calibration Tunnel facility was commissioned in the period 2010-2015 and now provides fully automated, high accuracy calibrations of probes for turbomachinery applications. The Mach number range is 0 to 1.9, and the tunnel spans a Reynolds number range greater than that normally encountered in turbomachinery applications in industry.
Supersonic Cascade Facility
The Supersonic Cascade facility is a new two-dimensional mini-cascade blow-down tunnel, with 8 vane passages of only 15 mm pitch and 40 mm span. It has been developed for testing gas turbine nozzle guide vane profiles at transonic exit Mach numbers and realistic Reynolds numbers with a quick turnaround and high accuracy.
Large Scale Platform Cooling Facility
Detailed experimental investigations of the film effectiveness distribution on engine-realistic endwalls geometry can be performed at the Large-Scale Platform Cooling Facility by means of infrared (IR) thermography. The facility is a large-scale, low-speed linear cascade with seven vanes.
Transonic Rotor Cooling facility
The Transonic Rotor Cooling facility at the University of Oxford is a new high-pressure linear cascade designed for low technology-readiness level research of rotor platform cooling. It will be used for aerothermal research into flow interactions between seal leakages across the platform, to develop and assess novel cooling systems, and computational fluid dynamics validation.