Translation. Region: Russian Federation –
Source: Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University –
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The Central Museum of Railway Transport of the Russian Federation has opened an exhibition, "Russia Chooses Speed," dedicated to the history of high-speed rail in our country. Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University contributed to the exhibition's preparation.
The exhibition features a wide variety of high-speed train models—outstanding engineering achievements that were never realized: a 1933 model of a ball train, a model of S.S. Waldner's aerotrain, a model of a magnetic levitation train, and a model of the Sokol-250 high-speed train from the 1990s. Of course, the history of completed projects is also shown—the Aurora, Nevsky Express, and ER200 high-speed trains, and the Sapsan and Allegro high-speed trains. The exhibition also includes materials dedicated to the design and early construction of the Moscow-St. Petersburg high-speed railway.
One of the key issues in the development of high-speed and high-speed rail technology is the aerodynamics of rolling stock. Part of the exhibition is dedicated to the history of aerodynamic research in rail transport. In 1909, Nikolai Rynin established an aeromechanical laboratory at the Institute of Railway Engineers in St. Petersburg, where the effects of airflow on rolling stock were studied and the force of airflow pressure on bridge trusses was determined. The exhibition features rare models made by N. A. Rynin.
Then, in 1909, on the initiative of N. A. Rynin andDean of the Shipbuilding Department of the Polytechnic Institute Konstantin Boklevsky In 1910, aeronautics courses were founded and construction began on an aerodynamics laboratory at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. Vasily Slesarev was invited to organize the laboratory and further develop the courses. The laboratory's largest installation, to accommodate which part of the 1st Student Building was rebuilt in 1910, was a wind tunnel with a circular test section two meters in diameter. The tunnel was repeatedly reconstructed (most recently in 1956-1957). The history of the aeronautics courses at the Polytechnic Institute is detailed in the article "The First Higher Aviation School in Russia" by Ivan Povkh, head of the laboratory since 1935, after the creation of the Department of Hydroaerodynamics at the PhysMech Institute, published in the Proceedings of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (1948, No. 1).
In the mid-1970s, research on the aerodynamics of high-speed trains was conducted at the Leningrad Institute of Railway Engineers (LIIZhT) (now the Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State Transport University). Measurements were conducted at the Department of Hydroaerodynamics of the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics of the M. I. Kalinin Leningrad Polytechnic Institute in the Large Wind Tunnel, which can generate flow speeds of up to 50 meters per second.
The exhibition features, among other things, the restored head section of a LIIZhT model with drainage holes to relieve surface pressure. In 1975, this model was used for measurements in the LPI Large Wind Tunnel (pressure was measured using LPI micromanometers with inclined tubes, one of which is also on display).
At the suggestion of the Center for the Study of Railway Transport (CMRT) staff, in 2025, a visualization of the flow around a LIIZhT model was conducted in the LPI-SPbPU Large Wind Tunnel using laser illumination of a system of air jets emitted from a set of tubes containing very fine liquid particles. Furthermore, velocity and pulsation measurements were taken near the LIIZhT model installed in the LPI-SPbPU Large Wind Tunnel using LPI-designed hot-wire anemometers and single-filament probes. Photographs and video recordings of these experiments, as well as the instruments used in the measurements, are also on display at the exhibition.
The exhibition opening was attended by Nikolai Ivanov, Director of the Institute of Physics and Mechanics; Evgeny Smirnov and Yuri Chumakov, professors at the Higher School of Applied Mathematics and Computational Physics at the Institute; and Andrei Yukhnev, head of the training laboratory. Evgeny Mikhailovich and Yuri Sergeyevich were already working at the department in 1975 and remember conducting aerodynamic tests of high-speed train models. In preparing for the exhibition, they planned a reconstruction of the experiment, in which A. Yukhnev played a key role.
I am grateful to the staff of the Central Museum of Railway Transport, and especially to curator Alexander Sergeyevich Nizkovsky, for their meticulous research in preparing the exhibition. We were literally immersed in the events of fifty years ago, when the first Soviet high-speed electric train, the ER200, was being developed, and the Polytechnic Institute, in collaboration with the Leningrad Institute of Railway Transport, participated in solving the scientific problems that arose at that time. It is gratifying that the unique experimental facility—the Large Wind Tunnel of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University—continues to operate. Importantly, in addition to aerodynamic testing, the tunnel regularly hosts laboratory work for students, allowing them to visualize the basic principles of hydroaerodynamics," said Nikolai Ivanov, Director of the Institute of Physics and Mechanics at SPbPU.
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