NACA-RM-A9L01

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Low-aspect-ratio, all-movable wings or control surfaces have been proposed for highly maneuverable supersonic aircraft as a means for providing greater aircraft control at transonic and supersonic mach numbers than that obtainable by the use of conventional control surfaces. <br>In such application, it is desirable that the all-movable lifting surface should exhibit throughout the entire range of flight mach numbers very little variation in the aerodynamic-center location and an adequate amount of lift effectiveness. The former requirement is satisfied by the use of triangular-plan-form lifting surfaces of very low aspect ratio; whereas the latter may prescribe lifting surfaces of higher aspect ratio. As a consequence, it appears that a compromise would confront the designer contemplating the use of an all-movable wing or control surface on supersonic aircraft. <br>It is expected that the design of all-movable lifting surfaces will be dictated largely by information available from experimental investigation, yet only a small amount of such data exists. Recourse to theory does not necessarily lead to satisfactory design data. Further-more, in the transonic mach number range the applicability of existing theory would be generally questionable. In order to provide experimental data in the transonic mach number range applicable to the design of triangular-plan-form, all-movable lifting surfaces, an investigation has been made of an all-movable wing in the Ames 1- by 3-1/2-foot high-speed wind tunnel. The results of this investigation are presented herein for the wing alone with a body at mach numbers from 0.50 to about 0.98 and from 1.09 to 1.29. In addition, calculations based on the theories of reference 1 to 5 are presented for comparison with the experimental data.