21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-3.8.3

AERODYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF UNCONVENTIONAL AIRCRAFT CONFIGURATIONS

Patek Z., Smrcek L.*
VZLU, ARTI, Czech Republic; * Univ. of Glasgow, UK

Keywords: aerodynamic, unconventional aircraft configurations

This paper describes the wind-tunnel testing of some unconventional aircraft configurations of specially designed wind tunnel models in the 1.8m low-speed wind tunnel at YZLU, Aeronautical Research and Test Institute in Prague, and numerical validation of CFD package RAMPANT performed in the computerised fluid dynamic laboratory at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, The University of Glasgow. The numerical validation is being conducted by the University of Glasgow as a part of the ongoing research cqllaboration between both institutions. The wind-tunnel test programme had two aims - to provide basic aerodynamic data on the effects of unconventional aircraft contigurations with a view to assessing the degree to which specific design features such as a combination of canard, wing and tail-plane are beneficial to aircraft aerodynamic performance - to provide an aerodynamic database for numerical validation. The aerodynamic data for different geometrical aircraft configurations with the same wing, fuselage, tail and canard surfaces were compared. The results show that the magnitude of lift, drag and pitching moment depends on the angle of attack and various positions of canard, wing and tail with respect to 'One another.

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