FLIGHT TEST VALIDATION OF WAKE VORTEX ENCOUNTER LOADS

摘要

Wake Vortex Encounter (WVE) is an event that may generate large dynamic loads on a crossing aircraft. This paper is devoted to show a flight test campaign performed on a heavy military transport aircraft aimed to measure WVE loads and to validate models and tools used to calculate these loads. A heavy transport aircraft was completely instrumented with accelerometers on wings, engine mounting system and tails, and load measurement of bending, shear and torque in several sections of wings and empennages. The WVE flight test campaign was split in two phases: crossing wakes generated by a jet airliner and crossing wakes generated by a turbo propeller military transport aircraft. After a description of the WVE flight test campaign, the paper focuses on the numerical models and software tools used to simulate the WVE scenarios. Three methods are presented. The comparisons show a very good agreement of the three tools between them and with flight test results. Once the tools have been validated, they can be used for subsequent parametric variations and to assess those cases not covered in flight test.