Transonic area rule

Supercritical Airfoil
• A supercritical airfoil is an airfoil designed, primarily, to
delay the onset of wave drag in the transonic speed range.
Supercritical airfoils are characterized by their flattened
upper surface, highly cambered ("downward-curved") aft
section, and larger leading edge radius compared with
NACA 6-series laminar airfoil shapes. Standard wing shapes
are designed to create lower pressure over the top of the
wing. The camber of the wing determines how much the air
accelerates around the wing. As the speed of the aircraft
approaches the speed of sound the air accelerating around
the wing will reach Mach 1 and shockwaves will begin to
form. The formation of these shockwaves causes wave
drag. Supercritical airfoils are designed to minimize this
effect by flattening the upper surface of the wing.
Garabedian–Korn airfoil
 Wave drag
• Wave Drag is a force, or drag, that retards the
forward movement of an airplane, in both
supersonic and Transonic Flight, as a
consequence of the formation of shock waves.
• Results in huge drag and boundary layer
seperation.
• This wave drag can be reduced by incorporating
one or more aerodynamic design features such as
wing sweep, ultra thin wings, fuselage shape, anti
shock bodies and supercritical aerofoils.
 The Sears–Haack body
• The Sears–Haack body is the shape with the lowest
theoretical wave drag in supersonic flow, for a given
body length and given volume. The mathematical
derivation assumes small-disturbance (linearized)
supersonic flow, which is governed by the Prandtl–
Glauert equation. The derivation and shape were
published independently by two separate researchers:
Wolfgang Haack in 1941 and later by William Sears in
1947.[1]
• The theory indicates that the wave drag scales as the
square of the second derivative of the area distribution
 Supersonic airfoils
• A supersonic airfoil is a cross-section geometry
designed to generate lift efficiently at supersonic
speeds.
• The need for such a design arises when an
aircraft is required to operate consistently in the
supersonic flight regime
• Supersonic airfoils generally have a thin section
formed of either angled planes or opposed arcs
(called "double wedge airfoils" and "biconvex
airfoils" respectively), with very sharp leading and
trailing edges
• The sharp edges prevent the formation of a detached
bow shock in front of the airfoil as it moves through
the air.
• This shape is in contrast to subsonic airfoils, which
often have rounded leading edges to reduce flow
separation over a wide range of angle of attack.
• A rounded edge would behave as a blunt body in
supersonic flight and thus would form a bow shock,
which greatly increases wave drag.
• The airfoils' thickness, camber, and angle of attack are
varied to achieve a design that will cause a slight
deviation in the direction of the surrounding airflow
• A sharp leading edge implies that the airfoil
will be more sensitive to changes in angle of
attack. Therefore, to increase lift at lower
speeds, aircraft that employ supersonic airfoils
also use high-lift devices such as leading edge
and trailing edge flaps.
 Anti-shock body

• An anti-shock body (also known as Whitcomb

body or Küchemann carrot) is a pod
positioned on the leading edge or trailing
edge of an aircraft's aerodynamic surfaces to
reduce wave drag at transonic speeds
 Some supersonic wing design
parameters
• span,
• sweep,
• taper ratio,
• aspect ratio,
• wing location (vertically),
• wing dihedral,
• twist,
• wing incidence