Investigation of Aerodynamic Support Interference for Testing a Semispan T Tail Aircraft Model

High-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) flow simulations were carried out to assess the sources of aerodynamic support interference of an aircraft half-model with a T-tail empennage mounted in a wind tunnel in an attempt to improve how well a semispan model can represent the corresponding full-span aircraft. The Bombardier research aircraft configuration (BRAC) model was used, which consists of a fuselage, a fuselage to wing fairing, a cruise wing with flap fairings, an engine nacelle and pylon, a vertical tail, and a horizontal stabilizer (HSTAB). The standard half-model support used at the National Research Council of Canada's 1.5 m trisonic wind tunnel consists of a wall-mounted splitter plate to remove a sizable portion of the upstream tunnel wall boundary layer and a two-dimensional peniche sandwiched between the model symmetry plane and the splitter plate. CFD simulations of the BRAC model mounted in the wind tunnel were performed using the Menter shear stress transport turbulence model at a Mach number of 0.2. The CFD results for the standard (baseline) mounting arrangement compared favorably well with the half-model experimental data. The BRAC CFD model was then modified to provide reference "full-span" data and to examine several alternate model mounting arrangements. All simulations were compared with the ideal full-span reference simulations. Significant disturbances were found to be induced by the reflection plane boundary layer and primary horseshoe vortex on the flowfield surrounding the HSTAB, which had a direct impact on the measured overall model forces and moments.