A sailplane is currently being developed at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center to support a high altitude flight experiment. The purpose of the experiment is to measure the performance characteristics of an airfoil at altitudes between 100,000 and 70,000 feet at Mach numbers between 0.65 and 0.5. The airfoil lift and drag are measured from pilot and static pressures. The location of the separation bubble and vortex shedding are measured from a hot film strip. The details of the flight experiment are presented. A comparison of several estimates of the airfoil performance is also presented. The airfoil, APEX-16, was designed by Drela (MIT) with his MSES code. A two dimensional Navier-Stokes analysis has been performed by Tatineni and Zhong (UCLA) and another at the Dryden Flight Research Center. The role these analysis served to define the experiment is discussed.
A High Altitude-Low Reynolds Number Aerodynamic Flight Experiment
Applied Aerodynamics ; 1999 ; Norfolk, VA, United States
1999-01-01
Preprint
Keine Angabe
Englisch