High Speed Wind Stream Facility

This facility is one of only two high-speed wind stream facilities within the Department of Defense. It simulates the environment that countermeasure flares experience when they are dispensed in a free-fall manner from an aircraft. The facility contains air-handling apparatus that operates in the intermittent blow-down mode. Air speeds are from 0.1 Mach to 0.9 Mach for run times of 100 seconds at the lower speeds. It provides both constant and preprogrammed variable velocity-time profiles. The latter is achieved via a microprocessor-controlled valve. Flares are mounted at the exit nozzle of the air handling system and remotely ignited. State of the art instrumentation measures and analyzes burn times, spectra and IR emission.