High Reynolds-Number Windtunnel Testing for the Design of Airbus High-Lift Wings

Present aircraft design methods must be continuously improved. This is due to environmental and future transport market requirements. Promising results are expected from development of advanced high lift systems for civil transport aircraft. At present the validation of the numerical design of a high lift / low speed system is done with subscale aircraft models. The final performance of the new aircraft is derived by extrapolation. This extrapolation to a full-scale aircraft poses a high risk in time and money. The accurate prediction of low speed / high lift performance early in the design process will, therefore, be a key asset in the development of competitive future aircraft. Consequently the Airbus approach for future design verification concentrates on earlier design verification by the use of high-Re facilities, especially the ETW. The experience gained in the qualification and development phase of low-speed testing in ETW via R&T programmes (as EUROLIFT) will be exploited in future in aircraft development work by early use of high-Re benchmark testing in close combination to the design work with advanced CFD-tools.