Low Speed Powered Lift Testing of a Transonic Cruise Efficient STOL Military Transport

he Speed Agile Concept Demonstrator (SACD) is an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) sponsored contract program whose primary objectives were to raise the Technical Readiness Levels (TRL) of advanced mobility component high lift technologies to a Level 5 or better through testing in a large scale relevant environment with jet engine propulsion simulation. The Lockheed Martin SACD air vehicle has a highly integrated propulsion system which significantly contributes to the high lift performance required to meet the short takeoff and landing (STOL) mission requirements. The SACD Task 2 effort which this paper documents was to validate the low speed high lift aerodynamic characteristics with a 23% scale Low Speed Powered Lift Model (LSPLM). The LSPLM was tested in the Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) National Full-scale Aerodynamic Complex (NFAC) wind tunnel complex at NASA Ames in California from March through October of 2011. There was also a high speed compliment to this low speed test to validate the transonic performance which is documented in Reference (3) for completeness.