Integrated flutter test of a horizontal-tail model in the large-scale continuous transonic wind tunnel

Abstract

Wind tunnel test is a critical way to investigate flutter characteristics of aircraft, particularly in identifying the transonic dip phenomenon in the aeroelastic design. The continuous wind tunnel has advantages over the blow-down wind tunnel in long running time, wide bandwidth of dynamic pressure, and stable flow field. Thus, the continuous wind tunnel is more suitable for transonic flutter tests. Flutter test techniques are studied for FL-62 wind tunnel, the first large-scale continuous transonic wind tunnel in China. A protection system and a real-time signal processing are developed to ensure the safety and efficiency. Flutter boundaries of a horizontal-tail model are investigated in FL-62 wind tunnel in the Mach number regime between 0.65 and 0.98. In the test, structural vibrations are measured via strain gauges, deformations and pressure distributions are measured via non-contact optical techniques, and flutter boundaries are predicted via a modal identification method.