Research>Flow control>Manoeuvre effectors

Background

A manoeuvre effector is a device or system on an aircraft that is used to change the attitude or direction of motion of the aircraft. Traditionally, manoeuvre effectors are based on hinged or moving surface controls such as flaps (aileron, elevator, rudder) or spoilers. For low observable aircraft, the presence of moving surface controls creates a large signature and hence there is an incentive to develop controls that work without changing the geometry of the aircraft.

'Flapless' manoeuvre effectors (FMEs) can be classified under four broad headings.

1. Devices that work on the principle of a reaction jet, e.g. roll jets on Harrier or JSF
2. Devices that increase circulation (lift) on lifting surfaces, e.g. Circulation Control (CC)
3. Devices that decrease circulation (lift) on lifting surfaces, e.g. Flow Control Spoiler Systems (FCSS)
4. Devices based on vectoring of a propulsive jet, e.g. Fluidic Thrust Vectoring (FTV)

The main challenge in developing flapless manoeuvre effectors of kinds 2,3 and 4, as with many flow control problems, is in producing acceptable levels of performance at acceptable levels of overall systems implementation cost. In particular, it is necessary to compare any advanced fluidic scheme to the equivalent reaction jet system (1 above) to determine the true value of any proposal.

• Fluidic Thrust Vectoring
• Circulation Control
• Flow Control Spoiler Systems 

Flapless manoeuvre effector wind tunnel model