Soufflerie Climatique Jules Verne – JVCWT 2
TA07 – KIT-ECN-CSTB-JVCWT 2
Location
11 rue henri Picherit
44300 Nantes, France
Description
The Scientific and Technical Centre for Building (CSTB) has been operating the Jules Verne Climatic Wind Tunnel (JVCWT) in Nantes since 1990. This facility includes two wind tunnels with climatic control from -30 to +50°C, with wind velocity up to 140 km/h or 280 km/h. This large facility allows for the simulating of severe climatic conditions, either cold or warm, combined with all kinds of precipitation.
The facility is made of two separate circuits, with the focus in this case on the internal thermal circuit (JVCWT2), which can produce temperatures from -32°C to +55°C and relative humidity from 30% to 100% in a test chamber with a cross section of 70m². The maximum air flow speed can be set from 90km/h to 140km/h. Snow guns are used to produce a thick snow mantle (15 cm/h) on the 200 m² floor of the test chamber. Other climatic parameters including frost, fog, hail and solar radiation can be reproduced.
The main technical characteristics of the Jules Verne facility include:
- Cross surface thermal test section SC2: 70m²
- Cross surface of jet flow SC2: 18 to 30m²
- Max wind velocity thermal section: 140 km/h
- Temperature control: -32° to +55°C
- Max rain intensity: 200mm/h
- Snow concentration: 1 to 6 g/m3
- Solar radiation: 800W/m²
Services currently offered by the infrastructure:
The JVCWT can reproduce at full scale the different atmospheric parameters, laminar and turbulent wind, rain, dust, sand in the Dynamic Unit SC1, and wind, fog, rain, snow, solar radiation in a thermally controlled environment of the Thermal Unit SC2. The control of the different climatic variables permits fine parametric studies of their influence, which is not possible in real outdoor conditions. Many applications linked to environmental, building and transport issues or safety can thus be rapidly studied.
Testing Capabilities
A wide range of current and emerging topics in European applied research require a facility like JVCWT. Approximately 10 to 20 European teams (outside France) per year are making use of the wide versatility of the JV facility to address topics such as:
- Static and dynamic effects of wind on structure elements at full scale
- Wind stability of slender structure elements
- Wind turbine components in rain or snow conditions
- Icing conditions on blades
- Thermal behaviour of wind turbine components
- Climatic behaviour of embedded sensors
Technical Equipment
Pressure sensors, thermal sensors, load sensors.
Additional information
Technology Readiness Level: 4-6
Special considerations: Experimental work must be planned 4 to 6 months in advance
Technology clusters: Offshore Wind
Website: https://www.cstb.fr/recherche-expertise/moyens/soufflerie-climatique-jules-verne
Availability: All year
Provision of tools to prepare data sets in a FAIR way: Yes
