Lifting symmetric supercritical airfoils for wing design of combat aircraft

Abstract

AbstractThis paper deals with the use of lifting symmetric supercritical airfoils in the wing design of a combat aircraft. For transonic combat aircraft requiring supersonic acceleration, the usual supercritical airfoil which invariably has camber is not suitable because of the supersonic wave drag penalty arising from the camber. Therefore, lifting symmetric supercritical airfoils which overcome this disadvantage were developed by the authors, and their beneficial effects in the two‐dimensional case were demonstrated earlier. The objective of this paper is to illustrate that, even when an unsophisticated approach is used for adopting such a lifting symmetric supercritical airfoil to the wing of a particular combat aircraft configuration, the theoretical analysis indicates some benefits. It is therefore felt that the use of lifting symmetric supercritical airfoils in the design of wings of combat aircraft using more sophisticated design techniques may be worth considering.