Some Experimental Studies on the Performance of a Rigid Wing Land Yacht Model in Comparison with VPP

It is important to understand the ow characteristics and performance of wings for designers who want to have an ecient thrust in a land yacht. In this paper, a comparison of aerodynamic forces obtained by testing the land yacht model in a wind tunnel and by the Velocity Prediction Program (VPP) is presented. The wind tunnel testing of a land yacht is an e ective design tool, but at present it is mainly used for VPP validation, which allows for a faster and more ecient design process. The rigid wing land yacht model, which is a radio controlled model, is tested in the national open jet wind tunnel of the Malek Ashtar University of Technology in Iran. The wing data, which is obtained from the wind tunnel, is used in the VPP as input data and then the parasitic drag and aerodynamic forces that are measured in the wind tunnel are compared to those in the VPP. Comparison of the results shows a reasonably good agreement between experimental data and VPP data. So the latter can be used as an e ective tool in the design of a land yacht.