21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-2.1.3

MANUAL AERODYNAMIC OPTIMIZATION OF OBLIQUE FLYING WING

Sobieczky H., Seebass R.*, Li P.**, Hannemann M.
DLR, Germany *University of Colorado, USA; **Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, Seattle, USA

Keywords: aerodynamic optimization, oblique flying wing

We use a manual method and an advanced geometry generator to optimize a large wing flying obliquely at M = ?12. These include the in-formed, but manual, design of the airfoil sections, the choice of wing planform and airfoil blending of these sections to create a wing. A manual tailoring of the wing planform and bending are used to provide a nearly elliptic load. The lift coefficient and sweep are varied sequentially to arrive at an optimum inviscid design. Considering this wing to be a flat plate, the viscous drag is computed. The altitude at which the wing enters cruise is selected to maximize L/D. This results in an Oblique Flying Wing with a viscous ML/D of 24.2, which compares well with the linear theory optimum of 25.3.

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