INTRODUCTION TO THE AVT-161 AIR FACET: AN INTEGRATED COMPUTATIONAL/EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO UCAV STABILITY AND CONTROL ESTIMATION

Kurzfassung

Within the AVT-161 Task Group a comprehensive research program designed to investigate the ability of computational methods to predict stability and control characteristics of a generic unmanned combat air vehicle and the X-31 experimental aircraft has been undertaken. The integrated approach to simulating static and dynamic stability characteristics was performed by the NATO RTO Task Group AVT-161. The UCAV, named SACCON (Stability and Control Configuration), and the X-31 configuration was the subject of an intensive computational and experimental study. The stability characteristics of the vehicles were evaluated via a highly integrated approach, where CFD and experimental results were used in a parallel and collaborative fashion. The results show that computational methods have made great strides in predicting static and dynamic stability characteristics, but several key issues need to be resolved before efficient, affordable, and reliable predictions are available.