Estimating Aerodynamic Characteristics of the ALFLEX Vehicle Using Flight Test Data and Comparison with Wind Tunnel Test Data.

摘要

One of the purposes of the Automatic Landing Flight Experiment (ALFLEX) is to estimate the aerodynamic characteristics of a vehicle with a delta wing and tip fins. The tests for this purpose, such as alpha and beta sweep tests and control surface excitation test, were conducted during the hanging flights and automatic landing flights. By analyzing the flight test data obtained at the Woomera test site in Australia, the aerodynamic characteristics of the ALFLEX vehicle were estimated and the results were compared with one predicted by several wind tunnel tests. As a result, the differences between the estimated characteristics and the results of the basic wind tunnel test were within the variation. Some other wind tunnel tests, however, showed significantly different results from the flight tests. These differences seemed to be caused by errors of the wind tunnel tests due to, for example, the effect of the supporting device.