Nonlinear characteristics of a thin wing in a shock-free flow around the nose

Abstract

An effective means of controlling wing leading-edge stall at high angles of attack is deflection of the nose in order to assure shock-free entrance of the stream. A numerical method of computing the angles of nose deflection and the aerodynamic characteristics of a thin wing of arbitrary planform for a shock-free entrance of the steady ideal incompressible fluid stream is elucidated in this paper on the basis of nonlinear wing theory [1]. The problem is solved by the method of discrete vortices. In the computations, the wing and its wake, replaced by a vortex sheet, are modeled by a system of discrete vortices which are nonlinear segments with constant circulation along the length. The angles of deflection of the nose and the aerodynamic characteristics of the wing, including shunting of the free vortices shed from the side and trailing edges, are determined during the computation. Examples of an electronic digital computer are presented.