Nonintrusive Diagnostics for Off-Body Measurements in Flight Experiments

ABSTRACT: Flight tests of hypersonic maneuvering vehicles are a challenging but necessary endeavor. While ground tests and numerical simulations can provide important guidance regarding vehicle performance, they are both limited in their reach. Likewise surface-based measurements during flight tests provide valuable information, but do not provide sufficient insight into the complex flowfield to allow unambiguous conclusions to be drawn from the flight data. To address the need for off-body measurements in flight experiments, the University of Notre Dame and ITAC, LLC are partnering to investigate the possibility of using laser-based aero-optic techniques. The proposed Phase I STTR will demonstrate the essential components of the approach in a supersonic ground test facility. The technology developed in this project offers the possibility of in-flight off-body flowfield measurements for a variety of purposes, including hypersonic weapon system flight tests and, potentially, as part of a high speed store separation control system. BENEFIT: By providing a clearer picture of the flowfield around a flight test vehicle, the proposed technology will allow deeper insight into the phenomena experienced by the vehicle. In this manner, many issues which must remain ambiguous when testing with current technology could be definitely determined. This will allow the development of safer and more reliable systems, which will consistently perform in a predictable manner because the flight envelope will be better understood.