hotshot wind tunnel

hotshot wind tunnel

[′hät¦shät ′win ‚tən·əl] (aerospace engineering) A wind tunnel in which electrical energy is discharged into a pressurized arc chamber, increasing the temperature and pressure in the arc chamber so that a diaphragm separating the arc chamber from an evacuated chamber is ruptured, and the heated gas from the arc chamber is then accelerated in a conical nozzle to provide flows with Mach numbers of 10 to 27 for durations of 10 to 100 milliseconds.