Study of the uncertainty behaviour for the specific total enthalpy of the hypersonic plasma wind tunnel scirocco at CIRA

In the mid eighties the European Space Agency (ESA) realizes the need of a particular facility to carry out experimental ground tests. The intention was to realize a large Plasma Wind Tunnel, very powerful, in order to test full scale component of spacecrafts in earth atmosphere re-entry conditions. Indeed, in hypersonic, differently from other aerodynamic regimes, the heat fluxes distribution is affected by the absolute sizes of the bodies inside the flow field. This means that it is not possible to apply scaling factors, and so the possibility to have large size models in these plasma wind tunnels is a huge advantage.