First NICETRIP Powered Wind Tunnel Tests Successfully Completed in DNW-LLF

Kurzfassung

A team of European Industry and academic researchers led by AgustaWestland, a Finmeccanica company, have successfully completed wind tunnel tests of a 1/5th scale model of a tiltwing/tiltrotor aircraft called ERICA (Enhanced Rotorcraft Innovative Concept Achievement) at the DNW-LLF wind tunnel (German-Dutch Wind Tunnels Large Low-speed Facility) in July 2013. This intensive research is partially funded by the European Commission under an EU sixth framework programme called NICETRIP (Novel Innovative Competitive Effective Tilt Rotor Integrated Project). As part of the NICETRIP programme, a 1/5th scale full-span, powered wind tunnel model was designed by NLR, and then manufactured in Russia and The Netherlands. Before entering the wind tunnel on June 18, 2013, extensive instrumentation calibrations, ground vibration tests, tracking & balancing and pre-tests were conducted in the exp. hall of DLR Inst. of flight systems Braunschweig and at DNW-LLF. Once inside the wind tunnel, seven trimmed conditions, representing hovering, transitioning and airplane mode, were tested. For each of these trimmed conditions a comprehensive number of variations (incidence, sideslip, nacelles, tilting outboard wings angles, flaps, flaperons, rudder and elevator angles, blade collective pitch angles...etc) were performed; resulting in a total of over 400 different flight conditions including an exploration towards the boundary of the conversion corridor. For each of the 400 flight conditions, over 800 parameters were recorded; consisting of about 50 parameters from balances loads, strain gages and accelerometers measurements, flight controls position, power required, over 700 static and dynamic pressures channels and a range of safety monitoring parameters. Due to the complexity of the model and numerous aircraft design variables, testing was extremely complex and challenging, during which many minor issues were discovered, but quickly resolved by the team. The test was successfully completed on schedule on July 5th, thanks to the skill and experience of the integrated AgustaWestland, DNW, DLR and NLR team involved in the testing.