This chapter describes wind tunnel (WT) testing's role in the development of the Diana aircraft, a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed by the National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA) in Spain. It compares the complete aircraft results calculated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods and WT methods. Flow visualization is a standard non‐intrusive WT technique that provides qualitative information about the flow‐field topology, giving an interesting picture of the whole‐flow behaviour. Two flow visualization techniques, the surface oil‐film technique and infrared (IR) thermography, are applied to a research presented in the chapter, on the investigation of the turbojet influence on the tail surfaces. WT experiments have a fundamental role in the aerodynamic design process of a general purpose aircraft and can, in many UAV cases, take advantage of the reduced size of the vehicle to use motorized models of the airplane, allowing for a very realistic and accurate description of the aerodynamic characteristics of the UAV.
Unmanned Aircraft Wind Tunnel Testing
2017-04-03
19 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
Gottingen Wind Tunnel for Testing Aircraft Models
NTRS | 1920
|A Wind Tunnel Captive Aircraft Testing Technique
NTIS | 1976
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