ALBERT

Description: Progress in aerodynamics over the past 50 years has been evidenced by the development of increasingly sophisticated and efficient flight vehicles throughout the flight spectrum. Advances have generally arisen in an evolutionary manner from experience gained in wind tunnel testing, flight testing, and improvements in analytical and computational capabilities. As a result of this evolutionary development, both military and commercial vehicles operate at a relatively high efficiency level. This observation plus the fact that airplanes have not changed appreciably in outward appearance over recent years has led some skeptics to conclude incorrectly that aerodynamics is a mature technology, with little to be gained from further developments in the field. It is of interest to note that progress in aerodynamics has occurred without a thorough understanding of the fundamental physics of flow, turbulence, vortex dynamics, and separated flow, for example. The present understanding of transition, turbulence, and boundary layer separation is actually very limited. However, these fundamental flow phenomena provide the key to reducing the viscous drag of aircraft. Drag reduction provides the greatest potential for increased flight efficiency from the standpoint of both saving energy and maximizing performance. Recent advances have led to innovative concepts for reducing turbulent friction drag by modifying the turbulent structure within the boundary layer. Further advances in this basic area should lead to methods for reducing skin friction drag significantly. The current challenges for military aircraft open entirely new fields of investigation for the aerodynamicist. The ability through very high speed information processing technology to totally integrate the flight and propulsion controls can permit an aircraft to fly with "complete abandon," avoiding departure, buffet, and other undesirable characteristics. To utilize these new control concepts, complex aerodynamic phenomena will have to be understood, predicted, and controlled. Current requirements for military aircraft include configuration optimization through a widened envelope from subsonic to supersonic and from low to high angles of attack. This task is further complicated by requirements for control of observables. These challenging new designs do not have the luxury of a large experimental data base from which to optimize for various parameter combinations. Consequently, there exists a strong need for better techniques, both experimental and computational, to permit design optimization in a complete sense.

Description: For some 50 years, man has flown, very successfully, in and through the hypersonic flow regime up to Mach Number 35 and beyond with very few "surprises." In general, hypersonic vehicles have performed successfully with good-to-excellent comparisons between flight, ground facility extrapolations and computations being the norm. A consistent and glaring shortfall to date is in the boundary layer transition arena, due primarily to the dominance for flight vehicles of roughness induced transition where the roughness characteristics are extremely vehicle specific and dictated by either vehicle operational exigencies such as antennas, handling plugs, and field joints, etc. or characteristics of the thermal protection system. Emerging shortfalls for future systems which require research flight tests include transition and air-breathing propulsion-related technology for both cruise and space access. Specific flight test recommendations include "systems demonstrations" for various air-breathing propulsion options and efforts to correct a pervasive lack of adequate analysis of the existing, and very expensive to replicate, hypersonic flight data base.

Description: This lecture discusses envisaged advanced concepts across the speed range including VTOL converticars (personal air transportation), advanced subsonic and supersonic long haul transports, hypersonic transports, and developments/applications of flow control technology. In most cases, these concepts and approaches offer at least the potential of 100 percent improvements in various performance metrics and, in some cases, far more. Special emphasis is given to advanced VTOL configurations which may offer simultaneous opportunities for mitigation of both drag-due-to-lift and wake vortex hazard and to synergistic propulsive and aerodynamic interactions. The lecture concludes that a virtual revolution in the civilian aeronautical world is conceivable as a result of technology maturation in several areas which could enable the exploitation of 'end-point' designs.

Description: Detailed, up to date systems studies of the application of laminar flow control (LFC) to various supersonic missions and/or vehicles, both civilian and military, are not yet available. However, various first order looks at the benefits are summarized. The bottom line is that laminar flow control may allow development of a viable second generation SST. This follows from a combination of reduced fuel, structure, and insulation weight permitting operation at higher altitudes, thereby lowering sonic boom along with improving performance. The long stage lengths associated with the emerging economic importance of the Pacific Basin are creating a serious and renewed requirement for such a vehicle. Supersonic LFC techniques are discussed.