Blow down facility

A blow down facility is a testing facility that relies on charging an energy reservoir (often a tank of pressurized gas) and releasing the energy over a relatively short time to produce test conditions at higher energy release rates than can be maintained continuously. Impulse facilities are a special case of blow down facilities that release their energy very rapidly to create very high enthalpy conditions over very short test times. Contrasting with blow down facilities are continuous facilities that can operate at a certain conditions continuously, such as some types of wind tunnels.