“CAVE OF THE WINDS”

Evening Star, Issue 19760, 10 January 1928, Page 4

“CAVE OF THE WINDS”

VAGARIES OF THE AIR TYPHOONS MADE TO ORDER Much information of use to aviators, automobile designers, ordnance makers, builders, and architects is being yielded from experiments being carried on in the “ Caves of the Winds ” at the bureau of standards of the Department of Commerce, at Washington, states fho ‘ Christian. Science Monitor.’ Typhoons made to order and under measured control of any speed up to 180 miles per hour are produced in the wind tunnels. In these streams of air are placed models of airships, airplanes, balloons, fin-tailed bombs, hydroplanes, automobiles, factory buildings, sky-scrap-ers, anything subject to air pressures from winds or which must pass through the air with speed and efficiency. The experiments tell the air pressure on buildings or bridges; how much a motor car’s power is used up in pushing the air aside; what wind pressure smokestacks must withstand at maximum local wind speed. The information gleaned permits the steady improvement of airplane parts with respect to stream lining and shows how much of a lift a given tilt will yield on various types of craft. An experimental smokestack 10ft in diameter and 30ft high has recently been built on the roof of the west laboratory of the bureau. Here pressures and suctions are measured so that designers and builders can make their smokestacks and other cylindrical structures to withstand whatever wind speeds must be provided for. An aluminium model of a factory building, typical of thousands of factories which must be able to withstand wind pressure, may be seen in the giant wind tunnel, the largest of the three tunnels at the bureau.

Alexander Graham Bell’s hydroplane boat, which later Hew seventy miles an hour, received its final touches on the basis of tests on models in the bureau’s wind tunnel. Stream lining has received great help from research tests in the tunnels. A certain make of automobile was found to.be using 30 horse-power supply to push the air aside. Wind pressures on sky-scrapers, about which only conjecture was previously possible, have been measured with great care, and the results embodied in large solid graphic models. Fundamental information, which will aid the art of aerial navigation in perfecting its stream lines to reduce resistance and increase the lift efficiency, is also being obtained from the experiments. Thousands of airplane parts have been subjected to artificial winds equivalent to air forces in flight and at rest, and information has been furnished which has made possible design of ’planes of increasing efficiency.

Loving Wife: “Now that you are ruined, Henry, I will disclose my secret. For years I have been saving up, and now (pouring a shower of silver coins into his hat) this may tide you over,” Husband: “Oh, my darling, how did' you manage to do it.” Wife: “Easily enough. Every time you said an unkind thing to me I put A diijlina into a bos.”-