Chapter 6 – Experimental and numerical analysis of the transonic vortical flow over a generic lambda wing configuration

Abstract

Within the AVT-201 Task Group a comprehensive research program has been designed to assess the ability to accurately predict both static and dynamic stability characteristics of air vehicles using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods which could revolutionize the air vehicle design process, especially for military air vehicles. A validated CFD capability would significantly reduce the number of ground tests required to verify vehicle concepts, and in general, could eliminate costly vehicle ‘repair’ campaigns required to fix performance anomalies that were not adequately predicted prior to full-scale vehicle development. The AVT-201 Task Group established an extended integrated experimental and numerical approach to assess the performance and accuracy of stability and control prediction methods as well as the ability to design and estimate the effectiveness of control devices for highly swept low observable UCAV configurations. The aim of the AVT-201 Task Group was to provide an assessment of the CFD capabilities using model-scale experiments and transferring this knowledge to real-scale application