Lateral Stability and Control of a Flying Wing Configuration Aircraft

A numerical investigation was conducted on an Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) model which is a moderately swept, tailless and flying wing configuration. A wind tunnel test was performed to validate the numerical results. Model forces and moments were measured using a six-component strain-gauged force balance. The computations were performed using a commercial Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) flow solver. The numerical results show that the lateral unstable of the model is caused by asymmetrical breakdown of the body vortex, and the flaps installed can induce earlier breakdown and intensity loss of the leeward vortex resulting in the enhancement of lateral stability.