Abstract Extensive experimental and numerical investigations on a highly swept generic unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) configuration of lambda type with a variable leading edge contour have been conducted. Within these investigations, it was shown that the flow field is dominated by complex vortex systems including vortex-to-vortex and vortex-to-boundary layer interactions. The vortex-dominated flow field has a strong nonlinear influence on the aerodynamic behavior of the configuration. Hence, controllability is demanding and poses a real challenge in the design of these kinds of configurations. Especially, the dimensioning of the control surfaces, for the lateral- and longitudinal stability of tailless configurations of low aspect ratio and high leading-edge sweep, poses a challenging task which is not yet solved. To understand the problem of lacking lateral- and longitudinal stability for these kinds of configurations, experiments in the subsonic and transonic flow regime have been conducted for the Stability and Control Configuration (SACCON), which has a leading edge sweep of 53°, to assess the control surface effectiveness of conventional trailing-edge control devices. The present study reviews the experimental investigations conducted with the highly swept generic UCAV configuration SACCON.
Experimental aerodynamic assessment and evaluation of an agile highly swept aircraft configuration
CEAS Aeronautical Journal ; 8 , 1
2016
Article (Journal)
English
Experimental aerodynamic assessment and evaluation of an agile highly swept aircraft configuration
Springer Verlag | 2016
|German Aerospace Center (DLR) | 2016
|Control Concepts for an Agile and Highly Swept Flying Wing Configuration
DataCite | 2018
|