22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-3.7.R1

THE USE OF ADAPTIVE WALL TECHNOLOGY TO EXPAND THE SUBSONIC OPERATING ENVELOPE OF THE DERA 8FT HIGH SPEED WIND TUNNEL

N. J. Taylor (1), P. R. Ashill, M. J. Simmons (3)
(1) Matra BAe Dynamics Ltd., UK; (2) Cranfield University, UK; (3) DERA, UK

Keywords: adaptive walls, wind tunnel, wall-interference corrections

Research aimed at extending the subsonic Machnumber range of the 8ft High Speed wind Tunnel (HST) at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) Bedford to values in excess of 0.9 is described. This has been achieved by adapting the flexible roof and floor liners of the test section, normally used to provide supersonic flows. To test the effectiveness of the wall adaptation, two models have been tested with different wall shapes; these were a half model of a combat aircraft wing body and a generic research model to study transport wing-body configurations. It was found that wall adaptation was able to extend the range of Mach numbers at which both half and complete models could be tested from 0.87 to about 0.95. The standard method for correcting Mach number, which uses wall pressure measurements, was shown to provide for virtually all the effects of wall interference. The small additional effects are readily allowed

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