Experience in the use of computational aerodynamics to predict store release characteristics

In the early days, store separation tests were conducted in a hit or miss fashion—the stores would be dropped from the aircraft at gradually increasing speeds until the store came close to or sometimes actually hit the aircraft. In some cases, this led to loss of the aircraft, and made some test pilots reluctant to participate in store separation flight test programs.During the 1960's, the Captive Trajectory System (CTS) method for store separation wind tunnel testing was developed. The CTS provided a considerable improvement over the hit or miss method, and became widely used in aircraft/store integration programs prior to flight-testing. However, since fairly small-scale models had to be used in the wind tunnel tests, in many cases the wind tunnel predictions did not match the flight test results. No mechanism was then in place to resolve the wind tunnel/flight test discrepancies.During this same time frame Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) had finally matured to the point of providing a trajectory solution for a store in an aircraft flowfield. However, since the computational tools were necessarily (due to computer resource limitations) limited to linear techniques, and since most store separation problems occur at transonic speeds, these tools had limited application.Recent advances in computer resources have greatly improved the capability of CFD to predict store release characteristics. Instead of using linear or approximate schemes, time dependent Euler and Navier Stokes trajectories could be computed in a reasonable time frame.Three international CFD Challenges, held during the last decade of the 20th century, have shown that CFD can not only match wind tunnel test data, but also predict flight test trajectories for complex stores at transonic speeds. It appears that CFD has matured to the point that it can be usefully integrated into aircraft/store compatibility programs.