May 2001 - Eidetics Corporation has been awarded a Phase III SBIR research contract to measure the non-linear aerodynamics of the F-16XL for NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC).  “This is Eidetics Corporation’s first Phase III SBIR,” states Brian Kramer, Eidetics’ Vice President of Engineering.  “It represents a great opportunity for us to contribute to the understanding of unsteady aerodynamics.”

The research is being funded under NASA LaRC’s Creativity and Innovation program, under an effort conceived of by Mr. Patrick Murphy, of NASA LaRC.  Mr. Murphy will act as the Government’s technical representative.

The F-16XL is primarily a delta wing aircraft configuration, and is known to suffer from nonlinear, unsteady aerodynamic phenomenon.  This type of behavior presents a problem for conventional aerodynamic models used in aircraft simulation or flight control design because they do a poor job of modeling non-linear or path-variant responses.  The Eidetics Model 2436 water tunnel has been uniquely configured with a computer controlled model support system and submersible balance to allow researchers to measure an aircrafts unsteady response to dynamic maneuvers.  The excellent flow visualization capability of the water tunnel also makes it possible to observe the phenomenon that cause these responses such as vortex position lag and burst.