Generalized adaptive-wall wind tunnels

Abstract

Adaptive-wall technology is being seriously considered for many aeronautical wind tunnel applications. A new degree of freedom is introduced into adaptive-wall wind tunnels. It is shown that the adaptive control system used to adjust wall boundary conditions may be used to select a wide variety of flow fields. These flow fields, in turn, maybe directly related to many useful unconfined or semiconfined flows. The generalized adaptive-wall concept is demonstrated for both two- and three-dimensional flows using simple analytical techniques.