Comparison of Aero-Optical Measurements from the Flight Test of Full and Hemispherical Turrets on the Airborne Aero-Optics Laboratory

摘要

The optical environment around both a hemisphere-on-cylinder turret and a hemisphere-only turret with flat and conformal windows was characterized at both subsonic and transonic speeds. Data was taken from Mach 0.4 to 0.65 at altitudes from 15,000 ft to 30,000 ft to analyze scaling laws, with a focus on Mach numbers of 0.5 and 0.65. A 25 kHz Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor was used to measure the optical aberrations around the turret. Data were primarily collected while the two planes slewed by, giving statistics at several azimuthal/elevation angles with additional data taken at fixed angles. Additionally, dynamics of a local shock appearing on the conformal-window turret at the transonic Mach number are presented and discussed.