ESWIRP: European Strategic Wind tunnels Improved Research Potential program overview

International audience“European Strategic Wind tunnel Improved Research Potential” ESWIRP was a project in the EU 7th Framework Program (FP7—Grant agreement no: FP7-227816), which was aiming at improving the performance capabilities of three strategic wind tunnels in Europe, by strengthening the cooperation between these wind tunnels in a new consortium. The research consortium members are Office National d’Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales (operating the S1MA as its largest sonic wind tunnel), German–Dutch wind tunnels [operating the large low-speed facility (LLF) as its largest low-speed wind tunnel], and European transonic wind tunnel (ETW) (operating its cryogenic wind tunnel). Together, these wind tunnels cover a wide range of experimental capabilities of relevance to civil aviation and aeronautical research in general. The project started in October 2009 for a period of 5 years. The European financial contribution was €7.2 million. The project consist of two major parts: (1) improvements to the testing infrastructure; and (2) the provision of wind tunnel access to research groups which do not usually have the means to access such large-scale test facilities. These topics also involved public dissemination and information activities. Although the tunnels covered in this project are of a complementary nature, the infrastructure activities were joined together, by a common representation of, and approach to, the tunnel performance characteristics. To this end, a generic model of a virtual wind tunnel was developed, enabling operators to assess the effect of the control parameters upon the testing conditions. The final aim of all participants was to provide the user community with an improved set of capabilities to test their innovative ideas. To provide better access to these three major wind tunnels, mainly research groups from European universities were contacted. The approach taken has included maximum transparency of the process and support of the researchers by the organizations responsible for the tunnels. In addition, when possible, we encouraged research groups to work together, to obtain the full benefit of economies of scale in research projects

Aerodynamic research on lifting surfaces for micro and mini UAVs

Communication to : Unmanned air vehicle systems, Bristol (Grande Bretagne), April 08-10, 2002SIGLEAvailable from INIST (FR), Document Supply Service, under shelf-number : 22419, issue : a.2002 n.117 / INIST-CNRS - Institut de l'Information Scientifique et TechniqueFRFranc