Civil-transport wing design concept exploiting new technologies

Current trends in the design of transport aircraft have shown that in order to be economically viable and competitive it is necessary to investigate technologies that can give an improvement in performance and operational flexibility goal, but must be shown to be cost effective. The current competitive environment forces the airlines to buy advanced technology aircraft and requires manufacturers to provide more operational flexibility, without drastic performance penalties. This is a challenging task, which might be solved by the use of new technologies. It is believed that the application of a hybrid laminar-flow control (HLFC) and variable camber (VC) to a wing would assist in achieving such a task. This paper describes an investigation aimed to examine the suitability of an aerodynamic wing design, allowing for the use of a combined HLFC-VC concept for transonic transport aircraft. The paper describes the phenomenon of laminar flow and outlines the wing design process. It then discusses the benefits and penalties of the variable-camber wing concept. Description is then given of the aerodynamic design of a wing that incorporated both laminar-flow and variable-camber technologies. It concludes with a discussion of the results and recommendations for future work.