FlightPathOBN
A bit combative with someone answering your questions.
My apologies -- I didn't intend to be combative. I don't mind constructive criticism when I'm imparting knowledge to other people, so I didn't see it as being a major problem.
The area rule was a concept, but there was no way to actually test it out because supersonic wind tunnels were not available until 1951.
I thought the first supersonic tunnel was available in November 1945, I'd almost swear I read about this when I was reading about the development of the USN's Bumblebee project, which would ultimately evolve into the RIM-8 Talos.
I don't know much about the specifics of the wind-tunnel though, if it was suitable for testing a model aircraft and if NACA even knew about it.
The XF-91 developed in 1946, so it would not have had the advantage of the area rule design validations.
True, but they still seemed understood about the basic principle to some extent -- after all they did intend to use a V-tail as to reduce the interference effects of where the tail surfaces joined the fuselage.
In August 1952, the first YF-102 was NOT able to achieve Mach 1 (0.98) in the tunnel and Whitcomb redesigned it using the area rule, and in October 1953, the YF-102A hit supersonic.
In January 1954, the flight test on the original was done by the Air Force and in level flight was only able to achieve 0.98 Mach, confirming the wind tunnel tests.
Fascinating, I remember reading in several locations that the plane could do 812 to 870 mph (I've heard claims this was in a dive or level flight -- it would make sense if that was in a level flight) -- if this figure was based on a dive-speed, then these figures seem entirely possible.
The area ruling made a hell of a difference as the F-102A was way more than twice as fast. It was probably twice as fast as a YF-102 in a dive in level flight
Brian Abraham
The Sears–Haack body is the aerodynamic body shape with the lowest theoretical wave drag. Aircraft designed to operate at high subsonic or supersonic speeds have their cross-sectional areas designed to match as closely as possible the proportions of Sears-Haack body.
Understood
The area rule was discovered by Otto Frenzl when comparing a swept wing with a w-wing with extreme high wave drag working on a transonic wind tunnel at Junkers works in Germany between 1943 and 1945. He wrote a description on 17 December 1943, with the title “Arrangement of Displacement Bodies in High-Speed Flight”; this was used in a patent filed in 1944. The results of this research were presented to a wide circle in March 1944 by Theodor Zobel at the “Deutsche Akademie der Luftfahrtforschung” (German Academy of Aeronautics Research) in the lecture “Fundamentally new ways to increase performance of high speed aircraft.”
What happened to that research post-war? We have the knowledge now, what happened between 1945 and now?
Wallace D. Hayes, a pioneer of supersonic flight, developed the supersonic area rule in publications beginning in 1947 with his Ph.D. thesis at the California Institute of Technology.
If his discovery was made in 1947, why wasn't it applied right away rather than years later in 1952? Was it due to the inability to validate it in the tunnel, or some other reason?
R.C.
"That being said, I'd like to remind everybody in a manner reminiscent of the SNL bit on Julian Assange, that no matter how I die: It was murder (even if there was a suicide note or a video of me peacefully dying in my sleep), and should I be arrested or framed for a criminal offense, or disappear entirely -- I think we all know who to blame for it"