Aerodynamic Design of an Extended-Range Guided Bomb

摘要

The Extended-Range Guided Bomb is designed to provide a low altitude, return-to-target (RTT) delivery capability from aircraft at release speeds from 330 to 800 KCAS. The rocket-boosted, 41.9-cm (16.5-in.)-dia bomb utilizes two orthogonal pairs of pneumatically-actuated canards for attitude control and lift. The guidance and control system consists of a stepdown inertial measurement unit and a digital computer containing an autopilot and navigator. Carrier aircraft compatibility severely constrained the size and shape of the canard lifting/control surfaces. Computer simulations indicated the canards must provide high lift with nearly linear characteristics to angles of attack of about 20 exp 0 . Extensive wind-tunnel tests were conducted to optimize the canard design. The measured wind-tunnel lift of the canard baseline design agrees well with the vortex-flow theories developed by Polhamus, Lamar, and coworkers at NASA Langley Research Center. Two flight tests (an unpowered stand-off and a rocket-boosted RTT) of instrumented full-scale vehicles released from an A7 aircraft at the Sandia Laboratories Tonopah Test Range, NV verified the aerodynamic design as well as the guidance and control system concepts. (ERA citation 05:006058)