Taking into account the seriousness of the greenhouse effect, drastic measures must be taken to prevent carbon dioxide emissions from transportation systems. In Japan, over 20% of the carbon dioxide is emitted from transportation systems. Aero-Train is a new zero-emission high-speed vehicle proposed by the authors. Aero-Train levitates aerodynamically using the wing-in-ground effect (WIG). In order to investigate the stability of Aero-Train, wind tunnel experiments of the front body section of a test run model of Aero-Train (ART002) and a levitating test run of ART002 using an improved control program were performed. The results showed that the front section of the body is unstable or is weakly stable in the direction of yawing and rolling. In the levitating test run of ART002, levitated running without surface contact was achieved inside the guide way. The amplitude of the roll angle oscillation was reduced by more than 50% compared to that of the previous control program. However, the vibration of the rolling remained.
A newly constructed towing wind tunnel facility is introduced. In this wind tunnel, unlike a conventional wind tunnel, a testing model moves in still air on a testing track. This towing wind tunnel facility can therefore simulate highly complex flow between steady ground and a moving model without using a moving belt system. The performance of this facility is first explained. Some results of wings in ground effect experiments and boundary-layer transition experiments obtained using this facility are then given. From these results, we conclude that this facility has enough performance for complex flow testing.
In this paper a newly constructed Towing wind tunnel facility is introduced. This Towing wind tunnel system can create highly complex flow and zero free stream turbulence condition. The performance of this facility is first explained. The results of our first experiment on the boundary layer transition on a flat plate are then given. We concluded that this facility has good performance for complex flow testing under zero freestream turbulence condition.
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