22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-3.7.R1
THE USE OF ADAPTIVE WALL TECHNOLOGY TO EXPAND THE SUBSONIC OPERATING ENVELOPE OF THE DERA 8FT HIGH SPEED WIND TUNNEL
N. J. Taylor (1), P. R. Ashill, M. J. Simmons (3)
(1) Matra BAe Dynamics Ltd., UK;
(2) Cranfield University, UK;
(3) DERA, UK
Keywords: adaptive walls, wind tunnel, wall-interference corrections
Research aimed at extending the subsonic Machnumber
range of the 8ft High Speed wind Tunnel
(HST) at the Defence Evaluation and Research
Agency (DERA) Bedford to values in excess of 0.9
is described. This has been achieved by adapting
the flexible roof and floor liners of the test section,
normally used to provide supersonic flows. To test
the effectiveness of the wall adaptation, two models
have been tested with different wall shapes; these
were a half model of a combat aircraft wing body
and a generic research model to study transport
wing-body configurations. It was found that wall
adaptation was able to extend the range of Mach
numbers at which both half and complete models
could be tested from 0.87 to about 0.95. The
standard method for correcting Mach number,
which uses wall pressure measurements, was
shown to provide for virtually all the effects of wall
interference. The small additional effects are
readily allowed
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