Development and flight testing of a fluidic thrust vectoring demonstrator

A demonstrator model based on passive secondary flow thrust vector power device was developed and the flight test was carried out, in order to verify the effectiveness of the passive secondary flow thrust vectoring technique and to evaluate its ability to change the attitude. The maneuvering time and radius of the loop maneuver were chosen as evaluation parameters of fluidic thrust vectoring control performance. The pitch angle and pitch rate data of the demonstrator model completed loop maneuver with and without vectors were recorded by micro-attitude sensors, and the data were sent back to the ground through the wireless data transmission device to store and analyze. The results show that, after employing the fluidic vectoring, the radius of the loop maneuver is reduced from 9 times the length of the fuselage to 2 times, the average time is reduced from 4.93s to 2.28s, and the mean value of maximum pitch rate is increased from 114.5°/s to 270.3°/s, compared with only rudder control. The results confirm that the passive secondary flow thrust vectoring technique can work in the rapid flight state and has a strong attitude control efficiency.