Drag Reduction: An Industrial Challenge
Author: J. P. Robert
Publisher:
Published: 1992
Total Pages: 15
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOver the last few decades and particularly since the 70s, all civil aircraft manufacturers have made great efforts to reduce aircraft drag. The long term aim of this operation is to reduce the specific consumption of aircraft, the potential reduction of over 10 % would represent savings of several million dollars for the airlines (fig. 1). The successive fuel crises (fig. 2) have increased the need for developing new technologies to be applied on the new aircraft; retrofits, however, also have their uses. Estimating the drag of a transport aircraft through calculation or wind tunnel tests must come as close as possible to the value obtained in flight. Forecast errors to the order of 1 % following wind tunnel/flight transposition lead to technical and financial penalties and entail vast efforts to bring the values obtained during flight down to acceptable levels guaranteed by the aircraft manufacturers to their customer airlines. The technologies or concepts that could significantly reduce aircraft drag often have a different reduction potential. This reduction must be clearly shown to appear in the high speed tests using large-scale models (1/10 scale).
