Experimental Investigations in the Tail Region of an Airship Configuration
P. Funk, A. Jakobi, Th. Lutz and S. Wagner
14th AIAA Lighter-Than-Air Technical Committee Convention and Exhibition, Akron, Ohio, USA, July 15-19, 2001
Abstract:
Experimental investigations concerning the viscous flow about an airship configuration at angle of attack will be presented. In particular, surface pressure distributions at the horizontal and vertical fins will be studied. The experiments were conducted in a wind tunnel with a model of the solar-powered airship 'Lotte' using a Scanivalve pressure system. After discussing some flow phenomena, the construction of both hull and fins, the experimental setup and the utilized hardware will be shown. Experimental data at angles of attack a = 10°, 20° and 30° will be presented, discussed and related to numerical calculations. The work was carried out in the frame of the airship research-group 'FOGL', established at the University of Stuttgart in 1997 by the German Research Agency 'DFG'.
