Liquid helium inertial jet for comparative study of classical and quantum turbulence

We present a new cryogenic wind tunnel facility developed to study the high Reynolds number developed classical or quantum turbulence in liquid (4)He. A stable inertial round jet flow with a Reynolds number of 4 x 10(6) can be sustained in both He I and He II down to a minimum temperature of 1.7 K. The circuit can be pressurized up to 3.5 x 10(5) Pa. The system has been designed to exploit the self-similar properties of the jet far field in order to adapt to the spatial resolution of the existing probes. Multiple and complementary sensors can be simultaneously installed to obtain spatial and time resolved measurements. The technical difficulties and design details are described and the system performance is presented. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3661127]