Transonic Testing of passive flow control techniques in the Pilot European Transonic Cryogenic Wind Tunnel

The reduction of aircraft fuel burn, which results in reduced carbon emissions, is of vital importance to aviation and society in general. One way to do this is to reduce the aircraft drag - the air resistance to its flight.

This is particularly true if aircraft are to operate at lower altitude where CO2 emissions do less harm, but where air density is higher.

One way to do this is to employ passive (requiring no energy input) methods to control the airflow to ensure that the wing shock waves are weakened and do not cause the flow to diverge from the wing and become turbulent (separation).

A consortia of UK Universities and representatives from industry (Airbus, BAe Systems, DSTL and the Aerospace Technology Institute) will undertake a campaign of fundamental experiments at the cryogenic European Transonic Wind Tunnel in Cologne, to investigate whether strips of small scale roughness on a small scale, but representative wing section, can effectively act to weaken the wing shock wave.