Flow Patterns of a Pivoted Rectangular Wing Aircraft

Most of the researches on the pivoted wing concept were performed with elliptic wings of relatively high aspect ratio at zero oblique angle. But, from the practical point of view, it may be important to evaluate the aerodynamic characteristics of non-elliptic wings, such as the rectangular or the tapered wings. The authors selected a rectangular wing and obtained the preliminary experimental results on the flow patterns and aerodynamic characteristics of a pivoted wing aircraft with a rectangular wing in low to high subsonic flows in order to evaluate the applicability of this configuration to a crusing vehicle. The aerodynamic characteristics of the rectangular pivoted wing aircraft showed a fair agreement with the experimental results of NASA which used the elliptic wing, but the flow patterns on the wing surface at relatively high angle of attack were quite different from the expectation.