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I think the move to Tennessee was a good one.

One of thelargest wind tunnels in academia has just begun operating in Tennessee, and ifJohn Schmisseur has his way, it’s going to ignite intellectual and economicfire power across the state.

Schmisseuris a UT Space Institute professor of mechanical, aerospace and biomedicalengineering and the H.H. Arnold Chair in Computational Fluid Dynamics. When heleft the U.S. Air Force four years ago, he brought a vision to the “blankslate” of opportunity he found at the Space Institute. Firing up a brand-newwind tunnel is only the first phase.

For thelast 13 years of a 23-year career in the Air Force Research Lab, Schmisseur ranthe hypersonics basic research program, including selecting universityproposals for Air Force funding.

“I had theluxury of interfacing with the best and brightest minds in hypersonics andbuilding great relationships with pre-eminent researchers in their fields. Thatprepared me very well for the next half of my professional life, because now,instead of flying to Caltech and Texas A&M and Minnesota, I get to behere,” Schmisseur says. “I wanted to make a strong contribution in hypersonics,and Tennessee is a great match.”

True to hismilitary roots, Schmisseur named his program—of which the new wind tunnel is apart—with an acronym: HORIZON, for High-Speed Original Research andInnovation Zone. The name also alludes to the military’s first post-World WarII technology forecasting report, “Towards New Horizons.” Subsequent Air Forcereports also have had “horizon” in their names.

“Knowingthis,” Schmisseur says, “we named our research group HORIZON so ourstakeholders in the Department of Defense would recognize that and realize weare forward-looking.”

UT HORIZONlooks forward with ambition. Schmisseur wants the program to conductfoundational research in aerothermodynamics—the study of how high-velocitygases behave—and in ground-based tests of aerodynamic phenomena. Nationalleadership in aerospace and defense research is the goal.

HORIZON gota boost in 2016 with $1 million in state funds, based on potential dividends toTennessee’s economy from aerospace innovation and discoveries, to build theMach 4 wind tunnel now at UTSI.

“Now, wehave the big job to demonstrate it will do what we’re saying,” Schmisseur says.“The good news is, we’re already hearing from industry and getting verypositive feedback from the community.”

Within thenext year, Schmisseur’s hope is that the Space Institute’s experiments willcross the road to Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC). Also known asArnold Air Force Base, AEDC is just across Wattendorf Memorial Highway from theinstitute in this remote area of Coffee County. Schmisseur calls AEDC the crownjewel and epicenter of Air Force hypersonics research, operating more than 55aerodynamic and propulsion wind tunnels, rocket and turbine engine test cells,ballistic ranges, sled tracks, centrifuges and other specialized units.

But AEDCtesting takes hundreds of thousands of dollars per week, if not millions pertest, Schmisseur says.

“I wonderedhow we could do something that easily feeds into AEDC, and here we’ve set upTALon right outside the gate.”

TALon—TennesseeAerothermodynamics Laboratory—is the acronym for the new wind tunnel facility.Schmisseur says it creates “a natural pathway to a discovery, innovation,technology development and early research environment.”

Just howbig is one of academia’s largest wind tunnels?

It’s about24 inches in diameter and 156 feet in length, housed in a nondescript metalbuilding on campus. When the tunnel is operated, air flows due to a powerfulvacuum created in a large tank outside the building and attached to the end ofthe 105-foot tube that passes through an exterior wall.

“Mostuniversities that have an aerospace program have a supersonic wind tunnel, andthey’re all about this big,” Schmisseur says, his hands a few inches apart.

TALon is 60percent of the size of AEDC’s Mach 1.5 to Mach 5.5 facility. The research-scalesize complements what’s at AEDC, Schmisseur says. “We can create arepresentative Mach 4 flow field and in just about 200 milliseconds—2 tenths ofa second—of operation, look at the instabilities, the unsteady phenomena thatoccur in the high-speed flow over a body. The characteristic time scale is onthe order of 1 millisecond, so 200 milliseconds is a lifetime for those typesof features, and we can measure them very adequately in a short duration usingour high-speed diagnostics.”

As aresearch-scale facility, TALon will offer relatively low-cost experimentation,tens of dollars per test.

Coming nextis a Mach 8 facility, thanks to a recent Air Force funding award. This facilitywill be capable of hypersonic range–velocity of more than five times the speedof sound, or Mach 5. At sea level, that is in excess of 3,800 miles per hour.