DGAC granted ONERA two refundable advances totaling 4.450 M? under very favorable terms, for significant upgrades to its main wind tunnels.
The first agreement financed the NOVENS1MA operation, which consisted in replacing the 22 blades of the two counter-rotating fans of the S1MA wind tunnel (the very large sonic wind tunnel in Modane-Avrieux). The new hybrid blades - steel + composite – have been in the process of being manufactured since July 2015 and will be installed in 2017. More efficient and with a superior performance to the original blades, they will be better able to withstand testing up to Mach 0.95 (10T of air per second).
The blades of S1MA’s fans date back to the creation of ONERA! They will be replaced in 2017
The second agreement financed the MORPHO project, for an amount of 1.449 M€. MORPHO concerns the complete overhaul of the wind blower information systems. This project is already well advanced; the MORPHO agreement of the DGAC will finance the deployment of the new information system in F1 (the large pressurized low-speed wind tunnel in Fauga-Mauzac) and in S2MA (the transonic and supersonic up to Mach 3.1 wind tunnel in Modane). The generic software architecture resulting from the MORPHO project has already been defined together with the AKKA Technologies group through an ONERA investment and has been tested in the F1 wind tunnel.
The new information systems will completely change the interaction of operators with the system and will facilitate the acquisition, processing, transfer and storage of test data. ONERA’s systems, although fully operational, had missed some "IT revolutions" and were no longer really suitable for the automatic operation of recent types of tests, such as PIV (particle image velocimetry), PSP (pressure sensitive paint), or the processing of very large volumes of aeroacoustics results. The expected duration of this operation is 30 months and is scheduled to start in January 2016.
These agreements cover the first two projects of the ATP France plan for upgrading ONERA’s wind tunnels.
The measurement room of the F1 wind tunnel getting ready to catch up with several IT revolutions
