Aeronautics Laboratory

From USAFA Folklore

The Aeronautics Laboratory (or "Aero Lab") is located in a building just south of Fairchild Hall.

[edit] Architecture

(adapted from USAFA's National Historic Landmark application)

The Aerospace Laboratory is a two-story structure with a rectangular floor plan of 225 by 43 feet. The exterior uses precast concrete panels with an aluminum-clad structural frame. The flat roof is built-up over rigid insulation. Columns are located on a twenty-eight foot grid. The roofline and wall panels are flush enclosing a rectangular box except for some columns, or pilotis, on the first floor of the south side. The primary entrance is on the north elevation with two sets of double glass doors.

This building functions as the center for aeronautic testing, containing wind tunnels and jet propulsion laboratories. Originally conceived as part of the larger academic building, acoustic problems forced SOM to place these facilities in this separate building. A National Geographic writer wrote:

Fantastic machinery in the "heavy laboratory" building outside the quadrangle positively terrified me. There was, for example, a trisonic wind tunnel in which air could scream through a pipe the size of my waist at 2,100 miles an hour. Steel-and-concrete test chambers for jet engines had viewing ports of bulletproof glass. Exhaust gases lost their noise in muffling systems that culminated in great story-high steel stacks outside the building.

Currently the facility houses five large wind tunnels, three operational jet engines, a rocket test cell, and a wide variety of smaller testing laboratories, classrooms and offices. The equipment for most applications is updated as technology changes. Generally, the equipment is within large bays with concrete floors and either concrete or concrete block walls. Ceilings tend to be either open concrete floor trusses (from the floor above) with exposed pipes and dropped fluorescent lights, or dropped acoustical tile with inset fluorescent light fixtures. An interesting design feature placed a portion of the south wall on tracks; the wall can thus be moved away from the building, allowing large jet engines to be moved in and out of the jet engine test cells. The test cells are designed to be explosion-proof with walls approximately a foot thick and heavily reinforced. Large exhaust stacks for the test cells can be seen to the east end of the main building.

In the 1980s, Skidmore Owings and Merrill designed a major addition, which extends to the south (rear) of the building, and also extends one level lower northward under the street. Although it added considerable floor space, the extension was designed to be sensitive to the original building, so the addition is mostly virtually indistinguishable today and thus the building retains architectural integrity.