Application of a full potential method to supersonic aircraft designand analysis

Abstract

A method based on the conservation form of the full potential equation has been used to analyze realistic aircraft configurations at supersonic speeds. A fighter forebody with and without a canopy and a supersonic cruise wingbody concept have been addressed in the Mach 1.41-2.30 speed range. Comparisons of predicted and measured surface pressure distributions and lift and drag for the forebody configurations showed excellent to good correlations, although some oscillations hi the computed pressures were observed. Good to excellent results for the wingbody configuration were obtained as well. The nonlinear behavior of the pitching moment was well predicted, although the magnitudes were somewhat low. These analyses have all been conducted using single-precision arithmetic on a 32-bit minicomputer. Execution times averaged 30-45 min for the forebody configurations and slightly over 4 h for the wingbody.