03.4 - Applied Aerodynamics
RAPID THEORETICAL EVALUATION OF FORMATION FLIGHT PERFORMANCE
R. Vilumbrales-Garcia¹, M. Lone¹; ¹Cranfield University, United Kingdom
Estimating first order benefits of formation flight or wake surfing is the focus here. Numerous flight trials have shown promising results and this work presents the numerical UVLM based wake modelling approach used to help develop an understanding of the flight observations. The authors show a clear correlation between experimental findings and model predictions.