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Public Domain Aeronautical Software (PDAS)  

In many exercises in optimization problems involving supersonic vehicles, it is useful to have an expression for wave drag of a wing with straight leading and trailing edges, pointed tip, and a simple airfoil section. While this solution is not extremely difficult, it is perhaps beyond what can be expected of a student or preliminary design team looking for a quick answer.

Arthur Rogers wrote a report in 1958 based on a 1947 article in the Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences by Allen Puckett and K. Stewart that gives a closed form solution for an arrow wing with a three-slope (hexagonal) section. Rogers generalized the 1947 results to include a non-zero trailing edge angle and produced a number of charts that have been widely used as well as a clear description of the computational process. The equations are not difficult to program, but some care must be taken because there are several fractions that must be evaluated at points where the numerator and denominator are zero. The limiting forms must be solved for and the programming must take care to avoid division by zero and use the limits instead.

The equations were coded at NASA Ames Research Center back in the 1960s and much of the original history of the authors of the code has been lost. I rescued the original code and have updated it to be compatible with Fortran 90 (in fact, with Elf90) in hopes that students and designers will not be daunted by the F and G functions in Rogers' report and use this for some interesting studies. There are many interesting variations associated with relocating the region of maximum thickness.

PDAS Home > Contents > Arrow Wing
Public Domain Aeronautical Software (PDAS)