NASA DRYDEN ENGINEERS RECOGNIZED BY NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
January 15, 2003
Release: 03-03
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The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) honored four aerospace engineers from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., this month. Ronald J. Ray, Brent R. Cobleigh, M. Jake Vachon and Clinton St. John’s presentation of the paper “Flight Test Techniques Used to Evaluate Performance Benefits during Formation Flight” was recognized Jan. 3 as the best paper from the 2002 AIAA’s Atmospheric Flight Mechanics conference held in Monterey, Calif., late last summer.
The paper chronicled the progress and results of NASA Dryden’s Autonomous Formation Flight. The project extended the symbiotic relationship of migrating birds to manage aircraft formations. The traditional “V” formation allows each bird flying aft of the lead bird to reduce drag and conserve energy. A NASA F/A-18 flying in the wingtip vortex behind another F/A-18 exhibited a 14-percent fuel savings at cruise altitude, better than the project goal of 10 percent. The project ended in December 2001.
The engineers will be recognized at the 2003 AIAA Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Conference August 11–14 in Austin, Texas.
(An abstract of this paper may be viewed at /centers/dfrc/DTRS/2002/index.html under NASA/TP-2002-210730. Another source for the paper is www.aiaa.com under paper AIAA2002-4492.)
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