NASA Flying Wing Model Soars In Historic Wind Tunnel

Posted on: Nov. 11th, 2005 || Source: nasa.gov | E-mail Article | Print Article

NASA Flying Wing Model Soars In Historic Wind Tunnel

Ask anyone what an airplane looks like and most will tell you a tube with wings. NASA researchers are trying to expand that image. They're testing a design for a flying wing, called a blended wing body.

Technicians have installed a five-percent scale model of a blended wing body in the Langley Full-Scale Tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. During tests in the tunnel's huge 30X60 foot test section, pilots "flew" the 12-foot wingspan, 80-pound model. It stayed aloft in the tunnel's wind stream constrained only by a tether cable. The flying wing is the biggest model ever free flight tested in the Full Scale Tunnel.

(click to view high resolution image)

"We want to understand the edge of the envelope flight characteristics of the blended wing body," said Dan Vicroy, blended wing body flight dynamics principal investigator. "We're comfortable with the flight characteristics of conventional tube with wings airplanes, but we don't have much experience with flying wings."

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