21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-2.1.1

REDUCTION OF WAVE AND LIFT-DEPENDENT DRAG FOR SUPERSONIC TRANSPORT AIRCRAFT

Lovell D. A.
Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), UK

Keywords: drag reduction, wave and lift dependent drag, supersonic, transport aircraft

Research funded by the European Commission to reduce the drag of supersonic transport aircraft at low speed and cruise (transonic and supersonic), and to assess relevant aerodynamic design methods, is described. The EUROSUP project, co-ordinated by the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, has ten partners contributing computational and experimental work. Results are presented for the first two stages of the research. Firstly the evaluation of computational fluid dynamics methods against wind-tunnel data for a supersonic transport aircraft configuration is described. Secondly results are presented for two linked wing-design tasks: dual-point transonic I supersonic cruise design (using linear, inverse and optimisation methods with geometric and aerodynamic constraints) and low-speed design. Three configurations of the wing resulting from this triple-point design are to be tested in 1998 to assess the aerodynamic design. Optimised deflection of segmented leading-and trailing-edge flaps at the transonic design point is predicted to produce excellent UD performance without compromising the supersonic performance. Estimates of UD performance at low speed indicate that the target value can also be achieved by using optimised deflections of segmented leading-edge flaps, but major limitations were exposed in current computational methods for low speed design. Further research is recommended in this area.

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