The GHIBLI plasma wind tunnel: Description of the new CIRA-PWT facility

A new plasma wind tunnel is under construction at the Italian Aerospace Research Centre (CIRA) located at Capua. It is named GHIBLI and the plasma is generated by a segmented arc heater whose power is about 2 MW. Such a new facility will be able to perform test campaigns on models up to 80 mm in diameter, and may be used to develop researches in the aerospace field of the hypersonic plasma flows from the reentry technologies to the validation of CFD codes for the theoretical predictions of aerothermodynamic phenomena. Target of the present paper is the presentation of results obtained by means of CFD simulation by using the well-known FLUENT code, Such a code has been used to simulate the aerothermodynamic field inside the conical nozzle of the facility to obtain some analytical correlations (fits) between the main aerodynamic parameters at the nozzle exit, such as the Mach number, flow density, mass flow rate, etc. and the reservoir conditions inside the arc heater column, total pressure and total enthalpy. Such fits allow fast theoretical prediction of the facility operation parameters for given reservoir conditions.