A free-flight investigation into the effect of body shaping on the zero-lift drag of a wing-body combination at transonic and supersonic speeds

Abstract

This report describes a series of free-flight tests designed to investigate various methods of body shaping to achieve low drag at transonic and supersonic speeds. In all, ten configurations were flown; three had unwaisted bodies, five were designed by area-rule methods and two were designed to achieve a specified pressure distribution in the wing-body junction. All the models had identical values of total volume (wing + body), body length and body base area; the wing design was also common (45 deg sweep, aspect ratio 2.4, thickness/chord ratio 0.074, no taper). The Mach number range covered was from 0.8 to 1.5. The area-rule models gave results which followed closely the design trends indicated by area-rule theory. The models designed to achieve specified pressure distributions gave a sonic-drag reduction of about 20 per cent compared with the unwaisted models, a smaller improvement than would have been expected if their full potential benefit had been achieved.