21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-3.9.1

STUDY OF ENVIRONMENT EFFECTS BY MEANS OF SCALE MODEL FLIGHT TESTS IN A LABORATORY

Coton P.
ONERA/DCSD, France

Keywords: environment, environmental effects, scale model tests

For the purpose of studying aerodynamics and aircraft behaviour in the low-speed domain, the Department for System Control and Flight Dynamics of ONERA (ONERNDCSD) has developed over many years a specific experimental method based on flight tests of scale models performed in a laboratory. This method, specially used for the characterization and modelling of the handling qualities of aircraft flying in adverse environmental conditions, is particularly well adapted to the study of non-steady phenomena. This paper first describes the facility and the main aspects of the experimental technique. The second part· is relative to the modelling concepts specially developed to represent dynamic and non-steady aerodynamic effects. These concepts are presented through some applications of the experimental technique. These applications are respectively relative to flight in atmospheric turbulence, static, dynamic and non-steady ground effects and near and far-field characterization of aircraft wake vortices. Concurrently to these studies, the project of a new laboratory is investigated to open the experimental technique to new fields of research and specially to study of new control systems and validation of control laws. The main outlines of this new laboratory project are presented by way of conclusion.

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