NASA Hybrid Wing Body Powered Lift Test
A Hybrid Wing Body (HWB) model with a "blowing" flap was tested at the NASA Langley Research Center's 14' x 22' Subsonic Wind Tunnel as part of a CFD validation effort. The wind tunnel testing of the HWB model provided unique databases to validate 3-D CFD tools for STOL efforts, particularly relating to the development of high-lift wings with advanced Circulation Control technologies.
Eight Aeroprobe seven-hole probes were configured into a rake shown beneath the port wing in the figure above to provide near-wake profiles of jet and entrained flows. The seven-hole probe wake-rake survey system consisted of two main parts: the rake head and the traverse positioning system. The rake head (shown here) contains 8 seven-hole probes spaced 1" apart. These probes were calibrated up to 200 ft/s by Aeroprobe Corporation. The positioning system could traverse over 3' in the horizontal spanwise (y) direction and 1' in the vertical (z) direction. The measurements were made over a plane highlighted in the figure below.
The data obtained with the Aeroprobe rake over the domain of measurement were contrasted with CFD calculations as shown in the figure below. In both frames in the figure, the in-plane velocity components are plotted as vectors, and the velocity magnitude in terms of color contours, for a flap deployment of 60°, and a slat at 10°.
The results indicate that CFD predicts two swirling regions reasonably well, but this method over-predicts the streamwise velocity and missed the wake deficit region near the center-body of the model.
