Conical wing of maximum lift-drag ratio in a supersonic gas flow

Abstract

The calculation of supersonic flow past three-dimensional bodies and wings presents an extremely complicated problem, whose solution is made still more difficult in the case of a search for optimum aerodynamic shapes. These difficulties made it necessary to simplify the variational problems and to use the simplest dependences, such as, for example, the Newton formula [1–3]. But even in such a formulation it is only possible to obtain an analytic solution if there are stringent constraints on the thickness of the body, and this reduces the three-dimensional problem for the shape of a wing to a two-dimensional problem for the shape of a longitudinal profile. The use of more complicated flow models requires the restriction of the class of considered configurations. In particular, paper [4] shows that at hypersonic flight velocities a wing whose windward surface is concave can have the maximum lift-drag ratio. The problem of a V-shaped wing of maximum lift-drag ratio is also of interest in the supersonic velocity range, where the results of the linear theory of [5] or the approximate dependences of the type of [6] can be used.