Recently, China Central Television (CCTV) revealed that the country’s cutting-edge “JF-22” hypersonic wind tunnel has successfully passed its acceptance test. According to a report by “TheDrive” website in the United States, China showcased the “world’s most powerful wind tunnel,” known as the JF-22 hypersonic shock tunnel, located in Beijing’s Huairou Science City. The JF-22 can simulate speeds of up to Mach 30, making it the foremost facility of its kind globally.
Jiang Zonglin, a researcher at the Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the project leader of the Huairou hypersonic wind tunnel, explained that the JF-22 is capable of reproducing flight conditions at altitudes of 40 to 90 kilometers with speeds reaching up to 10 kilometers per second, which is approximately 30 times the speed of sound.
The JF-22 boasts three significant advantages. First, its wind tunnel diameter is an impressive 2.5 meters, surpassing the largest foreign wind tunnels with a 1.5-meter diameter, allowing it to accommodate larger aircraft. Notably, even the Russian “Dagger” hypersonic missile has a diameter of only 0.9 meters.
The second advantage is that the JF-22 can achieve 40 milliseconds at Mach 10, significantly higher than similar advanced facilities both domestically and internationally, resulting in improved precision in experimental results. The third advantage lies in its high total temperature, high total pressure, and outstanding performance, placing it at the forefront of the industry.
Jiang Zonglin further revealed that with the support of the JF-22, Chinese researchers have proposed a product known as the “stationary oblique detonation engine,” which enhances traditional engine thermal efficiency by 50% and achieves a qualitative leap.
High-performance wind tunnels and other large-scale foundational research facilities play a crucial role in modern aerospace development, especially in the field of hypersonic technologies. The “TheDrive” website indicates that limited specialized infrastructure has been considered a significant factor restricting high-speed testing in the United States. In 2021, General John Hyten, then-Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, remarked that China had conducted hundreds of hypersonic tests over the past five years, while the United States had only performed nine.
In fact, as early as 2012, China achieved success with the JF-12 hypersonic shock tunnel, measuring a total length of 265 meters, which at the time was the largest and most advanced shock tunnel worldwide. Today, both the JF-12 and the JF-22 stand as the largest and most advanced shock tunnels in their respective fields, making China the only country with experimental capabilities covering the entire “flight corridor” in the hypersonic domain.
