Originally posted by baxterl
My only beef with the Mythbusters is that they could have come to AEDC and used the REAL chicken gun to bust that myth...but NOOO, they have to build their own. BTW, they didn't get it going nearly as fast as a two-stage light gas gun does. I have to say that one was inconclusive.
Actually, the 'chicken' gun that they developed was very similar to the projectors that are used for bird impact testing. Canopies and leading edges are required (by mil-specs) to be capable of withstanding the impact of a three pound bird at such-n-such speed, and a ten pound bird at another speed, etc. Bird impact criteria can add lots of weight to military aircraft.
I have seen high-speed film of a bird ingestion test on a P&W engine operating at speed. They used one of those million-frames-a-second cameras, and when they slow it down the bird just disappears at the first fan stage. As the leading edges of the big fan blades swing around (4-5-6,000 rpm?) the bird gets shaved off one little bit at a time, the engine gives a little poof in the exhaust, and keeps right on going. Cool.
The mythbuster guys could have saved all that trouble in trying to do tests on a general aviation windshield. These are typically NOT rated to withstand any level of birdstrike. Of course the bird went right on through.
A light gas gun is used to move small aerodynamic models through a special gas atmosphere to study shock waves at supersonic and hypersonic speeds. No application there to bird impact testing.
