Originally Posted by
Stanwell
Thanks for that post, PDR. Things are now a little clearer for me too.
I think I'd mentioned it a while back on another thread, but a former Chief Project Engineer with BAe, Roy Braybrook, was firmly of the opinion that ..
"The best place for a canard is on someone else's aircraft".
Note that my remarks only apply to canard
airliners where cost per seat mile and low cost of ownership are the primary concerns. Canards have their place.
One example is the supersonic fast jet, where various permutations of operational requirements can drive the design towards a slender delta mainplane - the use of a canard allows a slander delta to have HLDs like flaps & slats to reduce take off and landing speeds, while running at zero lift in high speed flight for minimum drag.
Another example is where absolute peak Cl is not needed, but a pusher propeller (for low speed acceleration and visibility) makes it difficult to achieve the desired CG win a conventional layout - the BAe SABA (especially in the initial P1233-1 config) is just such an example:
In this case it also gave a long straight wing with nine pylons whose position allowed the stores CGs to be bang on the aircraft CG, so there were no CG restrictions on what could be hung on the pylons.
I've got a copy of the original SABA concept study & brochure because this aeroplane fascinated me; and aeroplane the size and weight of a Sea Fury with a 5,000-7,000shp unducted fan would have been the ultimate aerial sportscar! I've always felt some wry amusement at the way it shows that future military needs can never be predicted accurately. SABA was cancelled in 1990 in response to the fall of the Berlin Wall, as part of the "peace dividend". At the time they said:
"With the threat of soviet tanks rolling across western Europe a dedicated anti-tank force multiplier won't be needed. The UK won't find itself in any major tank battles for the foreseeable future".
Of course history loves to bowl the odd bouncer [that means "throw a curve ball" for the colonials], and it was only months after that statement that the British army was in the biggest tank battle since El Alamein...
PDR