As Vickers turned its attention to civil aviation after the Second World War, Barnes Wallis, famous for his wartime work on ‘bouncing bombs’, was made head of a new Research and Development department.
Wallis knew that demanding tests would be required to realise his ‘grand vision’ for efficient long-range air transport, capable of flying non-stop from the UK to Australia. To achieve this, Wallis persuaded Vickers to design and build a high altitude and climatic test chamber, which became known as the Stratosphere Chamber, at Brooklands.
To simulate atmospheric conditions at 70,000 feet (21,000 metres), air was extracted from the Chamber by a number of vacuum pumps to reduce the pressure to 1/20th of that at sea level. The adjoining refrigeration plant cooled ammonia and methanol gases, which were then circulated through 16 heat exchangers, located at each corner of the four air ducts to cool the Chamber.
Climatic conditions such as snow and ice were created by spraying water into the Chamber over the test objects, and gale force winds of up to 40 knots (74km/h) were produced by the giant fans in the air circulation ducts. The other end of the environmental scale could be simulated just as easily. Heating was supplied by banks of 200kW heaters so that dry or humid heat could be produced at will. In addition, infra-red and ultra-violet light could be used to simulate solar radiation, which meant that temperatures for any part of the world could be faithfully recreated.
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