CONTOURINGAS SPECll?IEDBY TII!ZlTRANSONICARl?JIRUIX ON

An investigation has been performed in supersonic pressure tunnel to determine the (indentation) as specified by the transonic the Langley 4- by l-foot effects of body contouring drag-rise area rule on the aerodynamic characteristics of a delta wing-body cmibination at Mach nunibersof 1.41 and 2.01. Body contouring reduced the zero-lift drag of a delta wing-body combination from that of the basic wing-body combination without con-touring by 18 percent at a Mach number of 1.41 and 6 percent at a Mach nuniberof 2.01. However, the amount of this drag reduction due to contouring and the smount due to the change in fineness ratio cannot be determined. The maximum lift-drag ratio was increased from 6.3o to 6.95 at a Mach number of 1.41. Little effect was noticed on the slope of the lift curve, the pitching moment, or the drag due to lift. b the practical applications ~f cont&ring, ~he against volume and frontal-area changes. INTF63W’CT333N l***+ drag advantages must be weighed Considerable work has been done and is being done to establish the validity of the transonic drag-r@ee area rule (see refs. 1, 2, and 3). For wing-body combinations it has been shown that, by proper reduction of body area in the vicinity of the.w&g, the transonic drag~isew-~be L reduced as much as 60 percent and the hag-rise Mach number can be 3 increased as much as 0.05. Sufficient data have heretofor:.no~Mbe ‘!!:...,‘ available to determine whether the drag reduction realized%fltr &y *; “ speeds would persist to any extent at higher speeds. This prelimiilary WmEa#aws 2investigation has been conducted to determine is apparent at Mach numbers 1.41 and 2.01