Flexible High Aspect Ratio Wing Wind Tunnel Tests

Abstract

The UK Government funded Agile Wing Integration (AWI) project had the overall aim of supporting the continuous development of rapid, world-beating wing design and integration capabilities, for use during the early phases of an aircraft product development cycle. One of the work packages focussed on the design and integration of high aspect ratio wings, where the emphasis was placed on the modelling of nonlinear geometric and aerodynamic phenomena which could be encountered during stall and limit cycle oscillations (LCOs) and its effect on the overall aeroelastic behaviour. One challenge with regards to the validation of such phenomena is the lack of publicly available test data for highly flexible wings, and therefore a series of tests was conducted on a high aspect ratio wing model in the Airbus wind tunnel in Filton in 2018, with the aim of providing a more detailed and complete data set for model validation. This paper discusses the overall aims of the tests, the design of the model, the types of tests that were conducted, some of the results, and most importantly, some of the lessons learnt. The eventual aim of these tests is to make the model and data available to the nonlinear aeroelastics community.