Abstract
A special V-shaped support for blended wing body aircraft was designed and applied in high-speed wind tunnel tests. In order to reduce the support interference and explore the design criteria of the V-shaped support, interference characteristics and geometric parameter effects of V-shaped support on blended wing body aircraft were numerically studied. According to the numerical results, the corresponding dummy V-shaped supports were designed and manufactured, and verification tests was conducted in a 2.4 m × 2.4 m transonic wind tunnel. The test results were in good agreement with the numerical simulation. Results indicated that pitching moment of blended wing body aircraft is quite sensitive to the V-shaped support geometric parameters, and the influence of the inflection angle is the most serious. To minimize the pitching moment interference, the straight-section diameter and inflection angle should be increased while the straight-section length should be shortened. The results could be used to design special V-shaped support for blended wing body aircraft in wind tunnel tests, reduce support interference, and improve the accuracy of test results.
Highlights
Wind tunnel testing is an important method to obtain the aerodynamic characteristics of aeronautical vehicles, especially for the optimization and verification of the new layout of aircraft.During the test, a scaled model was installed in a wind tunnel through a support system, the flow over of which was quite different from an unconstrained real flight
This research could be used as a reference while designing special V-shaped support for blended wing body (BWB) aircraft in high-speed wind tunnels, which could reduce support interference and improve accuracy of test results
The influence of V-shaped support geometric parameters on BWB aircraft support interference was obtained by numerical simulation and validated by wind tunnel tests
Summary
Wind tunnel testing is an important method to obtain the aerodynamic characteristics of aeronautical vehicles, especially for the optimization and verification of the new layout of aircraft. In order to satisfy the different experimental demands of aircraft, plenty of support forms have been developed in high-speed wind tunnels, such as tail sting support, blade support, side wall support, wing tip double support, vane cable suspension support, and vertical tail support [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15] These support forms are widely applied in test institutes, such as the National Transonic Facility (NTF), European. This research could be used as a reference while designing special V-shaped support for BWB aircraft in high-speed wind tunnels, which could reduce support interference and improve accuracy of test results
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