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'Lucky Day': Navy Celebrates 60th Anniversary of Deepest Ocean Dive
A 'Titanic' Influence: Famed Explorer Celebrates Five-Decade Partnership with ONR
Ready for Refit: Navy-Owned Research Vessel Getting Suped-Up for Service
Diagramming the Deep: Navy-Sponsored Scientist Awarded for Sea-Floor Mapping
Pioneering Oceanographer Honored by Navy, American Geophysical Union
Cool Conversation: Global Experts Meet at Naval Academy to Talk Sea Ice, Icebergs
Environmental Evaluation: ONR Part of Joint Effort to Deploy Data Buoys Across Arctic Ocean
A Mighty Wind: Using Wind Tunnels to Measure Sound by Deadening the Noise
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsored a project at Virginia Tech University nearly 20 years ago that is now growing in influence across the world for measuring aerospace and aeronautical acoustics. Since noise reverberates against solid surfaces, such as the walls of a wind tunnel where acoustical testing takes place, collecting accurate sound data had been nearly impossible at the time. Researchers were also struggling to discern the sound of the wind tunnel’s air flow from the noise of the object traveling through it. After learning about some experiments on Kevlar as a wind screen, William Devenport, an engineering professor and director of Virginia Tech’s Stability Wind Tunnel, said he and a colleague wrote a proposal to then-ONR program officer Ron Joslin to try adding Kevlar to their wind tunnel walls. Devenport submitted the original grant proposal (N00014–04–1–04933) through the FY 2004 Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) for alterations to Virginia Tech’s existing Stability Wind Tunnel that would allow it to measure flow-induced noise of relevance to Navy applications.