CONTROL CONCEPTS FOR AN AGILE AND HIGHLY SWEPT FLYING WING CONFIGURATION

Abstract

This paper presents results of current DLR research on the stability and control behavior of a generic flying wing configuration. The geometry considered here is a flying wing configuration with a leading edge sweep angle of 53°. The focus of the investigations is the controllability of such type of configuration without a vertical tail plane for yaw control to reduce the radar cross section. The configuration is characterized by a non-linear aerodynamic behavior with a complex vortical flow field. Therefore extensive experimental investigations on the influence and effectiveness on spoiler geometries on such type of configuration have been conducted as well as numerical investigation for different control concepts. Due to the vortical flow field a control device vortex interaction results and changes the aerodynamic behavior of flap based control devices. Besides more or less sophisticated flap based control devices a control concept using thrust vectoring to increase the maneuverability is considered as well. The results presented in this paper provide an important contribution for the design of future control concepts for controllability of highly swept flying wing configurations.