Buildings
The Building 440 is an insulated, refrigerated hangar. There is an office and instrumentation building, a cold-weather engine test cell, the refrigeration system, mechanical-draft cooling towers, and a steam-heating plant.
The main chamber is 252 feet (77 m) wide, 201 feet (61 m) deep, and 70 feet (21 m) tall at the center of the hangar. It was constructed to hold aircraft as large a B-29, its size also fitting the larger Convair B-36 Peacemaker. In 1968, a 60 feet (18 m) by 85 feet (26 m) extension was added. It now has 55,000 square feet (5,100 m2) working area. This allows it to test aircraft as large as a C-5A. Under hot conditions, it can achieve 165 °F (74 °C).
The All-Weather Room is 42 feet (13 m) by 22 feet (7 m). It has a temperature range from −80 °F (−62 °C) to 170 °F (77 °C). Rainfall can be as high as 15 inches (380 mm) per hour and the wind can be as high as 60 knots (31 m/s). Snow can be made in the chamber.
The Temperature-Altitude Chamber is 13.5 feet (4.1 m) by 9.5 feet (2.9 m) with a height of 6.9 feet (2.1 m). Altitudes up to 80,000 feet (24 km) can be simulated. The temperature range is −80 °F (−62 °C) to 140 °F (60 °C).
The engine test cell was originally used for aircraft engines. It was about 130 feet (40 m) by 30 feet (9 m) with a height of 25 feet (8 m). It is now called the Equipment Test Chamber and is used mainly for tanks, trucks, and other equipment. The original building had small tests rooms for desert, hot, marine, and jungle conditions. These have been eliminated.
The original floor of the building was constructed of reinforced-concrete slabs that were 12 inches (30 cm) thick and 12.5 feet (3.8 m) square. The slabs rested on 13 inches (33 cm) of cellular glass blocks over reinforced concrete. In 1990, much of this floor was replaced with 25 feet (7.6 m) square slabs. The walls and door are insulated with 13 inches (33 cm) of glass-wool board sheathed in galvanized steel. To seal the doors, they are pulled against foam rubber seals. The ceiling insulation is on a corrugated steel deck, which is suspended from the roof trusses by chains.
Read more about this topic: Mc Kinley Climatic Laboratory
Famous quotes containing the word buildings:
“The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter’s at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,—faint copies of an invisible archetype.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means—from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)
“The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body. If humanity’s language, technology, and buildings are an extension of its constructive faculties, the desert alone is an extension of its capacity for absence, the ideal schema of humanity’s disappearance.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)