22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-3.7.4

DEVELOPMENT OF A HALF MODEL TESTING CAPABILITY AT ETW

M. C. N. Wright
European Transonic Windtunnel GmbH, D-51147 Köln, Germany

Keywords: high reynolds number, transonic wind tunnel testing

The ETW facility is a high Reynolds number transonic wind tunnel with a partially slotted test section of 2.0 m x 2.4 m. It uses nitrogen as the test gas. With the combined effects of low temperatures and moderately high pressure, Reynolds numbers of up to 50 million at cruise conditions for full span models of large transport aircraft are regularly achieved. To extend the Reynolds number range up to 80 million ETW has developed a half model testing capability. The operational temperature range for both full and half model testing is 110 K to 313 K and the pressure range is 115 kPa to 450kPa. The Mach number range achieved during the initial half model development tests was 0.15 to 0.98. The development of the half model capability at ETW has been driven by the requirements of the aerospace industry to achieve full scale flight conditions for future generation Very Large Aircraft in a ground based test facility. Considerable capital investment has been required to procure a model support system suitable for half model testing without compromising ETW’s existing full model capability.

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