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The Whitcomb area rule, named after NACA engineer Richard Whitcomb and also called the transonic area rule, is a design procedure used to reduce an aircraft's drag at transonic speeds which occur between about Mach 0.75 and 1.2.
After World War II, NACA research began to focus on near-sonic and low-supersonic airflow.After considering the sudden drag increase which a wing-fuselage combination experiences at somewhere around 500 mph (800 km/h), Whitcomb concluded that "the disturbances and shock waves are simply a function of the longitudinal variation of the cross-sectional area" – that is, the effect of the wings ...
Transonic airspeeds see a rapid increase in drag from about Mach 0.8, and it is the fuel costs of the drag that typically limits the airspeed. Attempts to reduce wave drag can be seen on all high-speed aircraft. Most notable is the use of swept wings, but another common form is a wasp-waist fuselage as a side effect of the Whitcomb area rule.
In the United States, the supercritical airfoil was an area of research during the 1960s; one of the leading American figures in the field was Richard Whitcomb. A specially modified North American T-2C Buckeye functioned as an early aerial testbed for the supercritical wing, performing numerous evaluation flights during this period in support ...
Anti-shock body is the name given by Richard T. Whitcomb to a pod positioned on the upper surface of a wing. [1] Its purpose is to reduce wave drag while travelling at transonic speeds (Mach 0.8–1.0), which includes the typical cruising range of conventional jet airliners.
In 1951, NACA Engineer Richard Whitcomb determined the area rule that explained transonic flow over an aircraft. The first uses of this theory were on the Convair F-102 project and the F11F Tiger. The F-102 was meant to be a supersonic interceptor, but it was unable to exceed the speed of sound, despite the best effort of Convair engineers.
Fuselage shaping was similarly changed with the introduction of the Whitcomb area rule. Whitcomb had been working on testing various airframe shapes for transonic drag when, after watching a presentation by Adolf Busemann in 1952, he realized that the Sears-Haack body had to apply to the entire aircraft, not just the fuselage. This meant that ...
Indeed, one of the popular analytical methods for calculating drag at high speeds, the Prandtl–Glauert rule, predicts an infinite amount of drag at Mach 1.0. Two of the important technological advancements that arose out of attempts to conquer the sound barrier were the Whitcomb area rule and the supercritical airfoil.