RTRI Hosts 58th Annual Meeting of the Subsonic Aerodynamic Testing Association

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June 28, 2024
Railway Technical Research Institute

The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) hosted the 58^th Annual Meeting of the Subsonic Aerodynamic Testing Association (SATA) in Kyoto from June 2 to 6, 2024.

Overview of SATA

SATA is a membership association for operators of large subsonic^*1 wind tunnels with 93 member organizations (as of June 6, 2024), including public research institutes, aircraft and automobile manufacturers, and universities around the world that own wind tunnels in this category.

RTRI has established the Wind Tunnel Technical Center in Maibara City to conduct research and development on aerodynamic noise and various aerodynamic issues of high-speed railways using a large-scale low-noise wind tunnel. RTRI became a member of SATA in 1998.

The main activities of SATA are discussions and information exchange at the Annual Meeting held in early June each year. This was the third time that the Annual Meeting was held in Japan, following 1998 and 2012, and this time it was hosted by RTRI.
^*1 Of wind speeds lower than the speed of sound

Overview of the Annual Meeting

Dates: June 2 to 6, 2024
Locations: Miyako Hotel Kyoto Hachijo (Kyoto City), Wind Tunnel Technical Center (Maibara City), and so forth
Participants: 76 people (54 organizations from 19 countries)
Number of presentations: 38

The meeting featured 11 sessions over four days; the June 3 session featured a welcome speech by Dr. Atsushi Furukawa, Executive Director of RTRI (Photo 1). This was followed by presentations and discussions by wind tunnel engineers and researchers on R&D utilizing large wind tunnels, new wind tunnel testing methods, and maintenance of wind tunnel facilities (Photo 2). From RTRI, three presentations were made on the results of utilizing the wind tunnel in operation at the Wind Tunnel Technical Center in Maibara City.

In addition, on June 4, a technical visit was held to observe the highest wind speed (400km/h) in the Wind Tunnel Technical Center in Maibara (Photo 3).

The next 59^th SATA Annual Meeting will be held in June 2025 in San Francisco, USA (hosted by National Aerospace Solutions).

* You can see all the photos and figures in the PDF file above.