DARPA CRANE Program Overview

Abstract

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Tactical Technology Office (TTO) Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program is developing unique aircraft configurations that incorporate active flow control (AFC) as the primary design consideration culminating with a flight test demonstration. CRANE recently completed four 12 month Phase 0 efforts that culminated in conceptual design reviews for each of the performers. Two performers have continued to mature their X-Plane designs through Preliminary Design Reviews during Phase 1. Throughout the past 20 years, the term AFC has been used to describe a wide range of fluid dynamic control approaches. Broadly defined for CRANE, flow control is a mechanism that alters the aerodynamic flow field through mechanical actuators, or by means of ejection or suction of a fluid (typically air) via an orifice on an aerodynamic surface or interface (e.g. wing, fuselage, inlet, nozzle). The CRANE program is excluding already proven techniques that use large external moving surfaces (ailerons, rudders, etc.), mechanical vectoring of engine jet exhaust, or other traditional moving aerodynamic control devices. Where possible, CRANE performers have been advised to maximize the use of commercial off the shelf (COTS) parts and components for non-flight control sub-systems in order to reduce program risk outside of the unique configurations and AFC technologies. Integrating AFC early in the aircraft design process requires extensive modeling and testing of the component and sub-component technologies to ensure the system level impacts are accurately quantified and the resulting unique aircraft configurations are valid. Successful inclusion of AFC requires extensive multi-disciplinary analysis and optimization (MDAO) activities to examine the trade space and select the design with the best vehicle level performance. To accelerate MDAO tool development and utilization, DARPA is working with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s (ERDC) Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) to provide high performance computing resources and numerical modeling expertise. In this presentation, the DARPA CRANE Program Manager provides an overall program update summarizing the AFC analysis and testing that has been completed during program execution.