Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry Flowfield Investigation of an Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle

Kurzfassung

Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) has been applied in an integrated design for the experimental investigation of a static and dynamic flow field on an Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) model. Within the scope of RTO-AVT 161 the SACCON (Stability And Control CONfiguration) model is used for analyzing synergistic design criteria and to reduce the timescale of the design phase by integrating computational and experimental analyses early in the design chain. In order to supply velocity field information on this model a joint measurement campaign was conducted by ONERA (the French Aerospace Lab) and DLR (German Aerospace Center). The ONERA PIV results focused on the forward part of the UCAV, the DLR PIV results focused on the aft flow field, as well as dynamic PIV measurements at a pitching model. The combined measurements enable the visualization and quantification of the flow field in several planes over the whole length of the model. This paper describes the results of the forward and the aft flow fields. The flow topology is described for the static case in dependency of the angle of attack. The results of the dynamic measurement highlight differences in the flow fields at two pitching cases of different pitch amplitude as function of the phase angle.