Take off and alighting experiments of a flying boat model in waves (Part 1)

Abstract

In the old days, flying boats are widely used because wide sea surface could be utilized as run ways without maintenance.But today, utilization of flying boats is only for the rescue in sea disasters. Considering the small land space like Japan, and considering the situation of great efforts are devoted to the feasibility study on floating airport in Japan, further development of flying boats and supporting floating structures will be useful in the future.For the utilization of flying boats, improvement of seakeeping quality is required. So, we considered to develop the experimental guide system for model flying boat in waves.Fortunately we have long towing tank covered by an air tube like building and equipped with directional wave generator. Utilizing this towing tank as air tube, we developed new guiding system for carrying out landing and take off experiments of the total model of a flying boat.Here, we report about this system and example of recorded time history.