CORDIS

To maintain growth and to increase the market share of the European commercial aircraft industry, new aircraft products must be launched over the next decade. Performance estimation plays an extensive role at all stages of a commercial aircraft development programme. Today the accuracy of aircraft performance estimation is dependent upon the ability to obtain high quality wind tunnel data and to extrapolate this data from wind tunnel model to aircraft scale conditions. The reliance on sub-scale wind tunnel testing introduces an element of uncertainty into aircraft performance prediction and an element of conservatism in the wing design process. The project 'HiReTT' is focused on understanding the effects of scale on aircraft performance and will establish a capability to account for these effects within the aircraft design and development process. This will be achieved through the acquisition of a fully corrected wind tunnel database for a modern aircraft configuration at Reynolds numbers representative of flight conditions and the application of current CFD methods to this type of flow. Such a comprehensive data set does not currently exist within Europe. The improvement in tools and test techniques delivered by this project will enable an accurate prediction of aircraft performance to be made within the aircraft design process which can be validated ahead of first flight.