Development of a dynamic wind tunnel model for demonstration of flow control maneuver effectors

Flow control maneuver effectors offer the potential for flight vehicle control with out the use of conventional hinged control surfaces. This paper describes the design, development and test of a dynamic wind tunnel model to demonstrate two specific flow control technologies for vehicle control, namely Fluidic Thrust Vectoring (FTV) for pitch control and Compliant Aerodynamic control (CAT) for roll control. The latter technology is based on the concept of designing regions of flow that are close to separation, such that they are receptive to small flow control inputs. The demonstrator model is based on a generic blended wing UCAV planform and can be configured to be free in pitch or free in roll. A key challenge in the model design was porting high pressure air for the FTV system into the model across a rotational degree of freedom. This was solved using bespoke high pressure sealed bearings. Experiments were conducted in the University of Manchester 2.1×2.8m wind tunnel at a free stream speed of 30m/s. Preliminary qualitative results show that the model can be successfully controlled in both pitch and roll using the flow control technologies under investigation, paving the way for future quantitative experiments.