The Chinese Aeronautical Establishment CAE and DNW have been engaged in informal and formal cooperative research for some time now. The first formal agreement was signed at the Paris Air Show in June 2011. At that time, it was decided to focus on the predictions and their verification for transonic civil transport aircraft configurations. For the purpose of this work, the CAE designed a reference model for business jet configuration termed the Aerodynamic Validation Model (CAE-AVM), the geometry of which was made available to international research organizations for their reference. This model was extensively tested in the DNW-HST where in addition to the aerodynamic performance of the model, its deformation under steady loads was recorded in parallel. The results of the collaboration and predictions from participating institutes were reported and analysed in an international workshop under the title “CFD-Wind Tunnel Correlation Study” in Beijing in March 2016. The workshop was judged a success by the participants from numerous institutions world-wide and the organizers from CAE and DNW.
Agreement has now been reached to start a follow up to that successful workshop. As the first step there will be further wind tunnel tests performed by DNW, under the leadership of CAE, to expand the investigation to more aircraft configurations and to both low and high speed regimes. There is also a second international workshop planned for Spring 2019 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
On the 5th of February 2018 the first new wind tunnel test was formally agreed upon in Beijing. In an fitting ceremony, Dr. Sun Xiasheng, Executive Vice-President of CAE, recalled the success of the first workshop and signed the agreement for the first new tests. DNW was represented by Henri Vos, Business Development Manager of DNW. Both parties expressed their confidence in these new steps and in the long term prospects of the collaboration.
CAE and DNW are confident that this partnership will continue to lead to new knowledge in aerodynamic predictions and verification for both parties. It will also confirm the friendship between the two organizations and the people involved.