EXPERIMENTAL AERODYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF VEHICLES TRAVELING IN TUBES

A simplified theoretical model for a vehicle traveling through an unvented tube under equilibrium incompressible conditions was used to guide the test program, reduce the data, and determine the self-consistency of the results. The results were then used to establish values for the arbitrary coefficients in the theoretical model. Substantial progress was made in understanding the aerodynamic characteristics of vehicles traveling in tubes as exemplified by the good agreement of the theoretical model predictions with the experimental data throughout the Reynolds number range (three orders of magnitude, up to that for an actual full-scale system) and the many geometric variables tested.