Study on the influence of pumping system on the hydrodynamic performance of air tanker

The influence of the pumping system on the hydrodynamic performance of the air tanker were investigated in this paper. The hydrodynamic performance of the air tanker with different displacements under the different Froude numbers was studied by experimental method. RANS methods and overset mesh were used to compute the viscous flow field of an air tanker under three conditions at different Froude numbers. Numerical method adopted in this paper was verified and validated by comparing the experimental results with the simulation results. The experimental results showed that the total resistance and the heave amplitude of air tanker with different displacements increased, while the pitch angle decreased, as the speed increased. And the larger the displacement, the greater the total resistance, pitch angle and heave amplitude. The simulation results showed that the drainage efficiency, the load of the baler and the additional pitching moment showed non-linear growth with increasing speed. As the baler lowered, the total resistance and heave amplitude of the aircraft increased, but the pitch reduced. The effect on the hydrodynamic performance of air tanker was not obvious as the baler closed.