The Longitudinal Aerodynamic Characteristics of a Sweptback Wing-Body Combination With and Without End Plates at Mach Numbers from 0.40 to 0.93

An investigation was made at high subsonic speeds in the Langley high-speed 7- by 10-foot tunnel to determine the effect of end plates on the longitudinal aerodynamic characteristics of a sweptback wing-body combination with and without drooped chord-extensions. The wing had 45 deg sweepback of the quarter-chord line, an aspect ratio of 4, a taper ratio of 0.3, and NACA 65AO06 airfoil sections parallel to the plane of symmetry, and was mounted near the rear of a body of revolution having a fineness ratio of approximately 8. The results indicated that the addition of the end plates to either the wing with drooped chord-extensions or to the wing without drooped chord-extensions slightly increased the lift in the low angle-of-attack range but slightly decreased the lift at moderate and high angles of attack. The addition of the end plates to the wing without the chord-extensions caused a small increase in the maximum lift-drag ratio at Mach numbers below 0.65 and a slight decrease at the higher Mach numbers; however, for the addition of the end plates to the wing with the chord- extensions the maximum lift-drag ratio was slightly decreased below a Mach number of 0.88, while a slight increase occurred for the higher Mach numbers. The addition of the end plates to the wings with and without the chord-extensions caused the static longitudinal stability to increase considerably for all Mach numbers; however, only a slight reduction in the aerodynamic-center variation with Mach number was observed.