Wind Tunnel Testing Using a Robotic Sting for Lateral-Directional Stability Evaluation of a Tailless SST Aircraft Configuration

A tailless SST aircraft configuration is the main focus of our theoretical and experimental work in INCAS Supersonic Wind Tunnel. It is a basic fact that the demand for high-performance characteristics has led to aerodynamically unstable aircraft configurations in part of all of their flight envelope. Although unstable aircraft can be flown only with the aid of a flight controller (i.e. in a closed loop), determination in wind tunnel testing of the aerodynamic characteristics of the basic aircraft is still of primary interest in the advanced design in order to achieve airworthiness compliance. Moreover, the increased maturity of key technologies for sustainable high speed/supersonic flight makes possible the development of a new generation of design and optimization tools extending current philosophy with respect to the stable aircraft. This is why we focus on lateral-directional stability characteristics in the wind tunnel tests, introducing a newly developed robotic sting, driven using AI software.