Experimental trim drag values for conventional and supercritical wings

Supercritical wings were studied to determine whether they incur higher trim drag values at cruise conditions than wide body technology wings. Relative trim drag increments were measured in an experimental wind tunnel investigation. The tests utilized high aspect ratio supercritical wing and a wide body wing in conjunction with five different horizontal tail configurations, mounted on a representative wide body fuselage. The three low tail configurations and two T tail configurations were chosen to measure the effects on horizontal tail size, location, and camber on the trim drag increments for the two wings. The increase in performance (lift to drag ratio) for supercritical wing over the wide body wing was 11 percent for both the optimum low tail and T tail configurations.