Design, Construction, and Tests of an Aeroelastic Wind Tunnel Model of a Variable Camber Continuous Trailing Edge Flap (VCCTEF) Concept Wing

Abstract

The Variable Camber Continuous Trailing Edge Flap (VCCTEF) wing is a concept of current interest for a design that would allow, if validated, improvements in aircraft performance by replacing conventional, articulated flap systems with a system that would enable controlled deformation of wings via spanwise and chordwise camber shape variations that would be continuous and rich in the camber shape distributions they would allow. Anticipating considerable aeroelastic interactions with the structurally and aerodynamically optimized wings that the VCCTEF would be part of, a short schedule / low cost exploratory wind tunnel research program was launched at the University of Washington aimed at obtaining wind tunnel results for a prototype elastic VCCTEF wing that would offer initial insights and provide data for mathematical modeling and validation of simulation capabilities developed for the VCCTEF research program effort. This paper describes the wind tunnel model design, construction, and test effort at the University of Washington, including analysis / test correlations using standard aeroelastic analysis tools.