Fly-Off in the Wind Tunnels

With the increased emphasis on technical evaluation of flight vehicles during preliminary design, the wind tunnels play an important role in establishing the base for extrapolation to full-scale performance. Present-day research and development programs are established to improve the correction procedures that are applied to the experimental data, and reviews are proceeding to establish the requirements for newer facilities that will better approximate the needed full-scale results. Combining the potentially improved accuracy of obtaining data with the sophisticated computerized design and simulation techniques, it will then be possible to achieve a fly-off in the wind tunnels.