The ALFLEX (Automatic Landing Flight Experiment) vehicle is a 37 percent scale model of a future reentry vehicle, HOPE (H-2 Orbiting Plane), and was developed for investigating the horizontal landing capability of the HOPE. The flight experiment was carried out at the Woomera Airfield in South Australia in 1996. Landing trials of the ALFLEX were realized by releasing the vehicle hung by a cable from a helicopter. After the release, the vehicle autonomously made path capture, equilibrium gliding on a -30 deg flight path, flare and touch-down on a runway. During the development phase, ground effects had been considered as key issues that affect the landing performance, and wind tunnel tests for predicting the ground effects had been carried out. For the purpose of validating the potential of the wind tunnel data for future designs, ground effect characteristics derived from the flight data and comparison with the wind tunnel data are given in this paper.
ALFLEXの飛行実験より得られた地面効果
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