A study on the planform effects of high-speed vehicles

A study is presented on the planform effects of transport aircraft in the Mach 3 to 6 range. A request for proposal containing a baseline mission profile was common to four aircraft designs. These aircrafts were designed to perform the same mission in order to obtain conclusions regarding the performance of the aircraft. The four configurations include the blended-wing-body concept, jointed-wing concept, oblique-wing concept and the caret (waverider) concept. This paper presents the top-level performance trends common to the four configurations during high-speed flight. No conclusions are presented on the best planform as all the designs have positive and negative aspects. However, both the positive and negative features of the designs are identified.