Aviation Week & Space Technology bestows honors to a team including AEDC’s National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Facility

  • Published
  • By Philip Lorenz III
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine recently bestowed an Aeronautics/Propulsion award to a Speed Agile team that included employees of AEDC's National Full Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC), Mountain View, Calif.

The publication presented their annual 56th Laureate Awards in Washington D.C., and other members of the Speed Agile Concept Demonstrator (SACD) program team receiving the Aeronautics/Propulsion award category included employees of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio and representatives from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Corp. (LMC) Advanced Development Programs (ADP) Division.

Each year, Aviation Week & Space Technology, which reports on the full scope of the aerospace industry, including global aviation, aerospace, defense, corporate and government entities, honors the extraordinary achievements of individuals and teams in the aviation, aerospace and defense communities.

The Speed Agile team sought to develop and advance a concept for a next-generation, heavy-lift, fixed-wing military transport aircraft capable of combining short take-off and landing (STOL) capabilities with efficient transonic cruise. The overall program goals also have potential extensions to the future of civil aviation. The program consisted of six tasks -including testing at NFAC and NASA Langley's National Transonic Facility.

"The NFAC test program was one of the tasks associated with the overall development, which included initial and detailed configuration designs, testing at NFAC and [NASA] Langley's National Transonic Facility and development of a six-degree-of-freedom flight simulator," said Patrick Goulding II, who led the NFAC test efforts. "The NFAC test was instrumental in collecting low-speed data on a large-scale powered model of the aircraft and served as a key proof of concept for LMC's innovative Hybrid Powered Lift System--which combined circulation control wing technology with a specially designed Reverse Ejecting Nozzle that provided thrust vectoring."

Goulding said he is proud of what the team at NFAC was able to accomplish.

"This test program required tremendous effort from the entire NFAC staff," he said. "NFAC personnel worked diligently and professionally with representatives from LMC, ARFL, and the model builder to ensure the test was safe, efficient, and successful despite a great deal of challenges and adversity."

Most of the challenges were associated with dealing with the large and complex test article--which featured a 41-foot wingspan, live jet engines, remotely-actuated control surfaces and a highly intricate suite of instrumentation.

"The flexibility and expertise of the NFAC mechanic and instrumentation crews were crucial in helping the test efficiently recover from issues as they arose," he said. "NFAC also worked to find ways to improve certain elements of the model design as the test continued and make the model more robust and reliable."

NFAC testing was focused on providing proof of concept for the Hybrid Powered Lift System in a large, powered model and collecting critical low-speed take-off, landing and approach and cruise data for use in developing a flight simulator. The data was used in conjunction with the high-speed transonic data collected at NASA's National Transonic Facility to fully characterize the design space.

"NFAC provided a test environment that allowed Lockheed Martin to test their configuration at very large scale," Goulding said. "By combining data from the 80x120 [wind tunnel] and 40x80 [wind tunnel], the test team was able to obtain quality thrust calibrations and characterize all the critical low-speed performance associated with approach, take-off, and landing--the most critical flight control regimes.

"The scale of the NFAC tunnels also allowed for a model that was large enough to incorporate live engines, a fully-adjustable set of control surfaces, and a complex suite of instrumentation, all of which were critical to establishing proof of concept and advancing the Technology Readiness Level."

NFAC's contributions to the overall SACD program were key in making the program a success and helping it achieve this prestigious notoriety.