Supercritical Airfoil Design for Future High-Altitude Long-Endurance Concepts

Abstract

The design and analysis is presented of a new laminar flow airfoil for a future high-altitude long-endurance aircraft that has an operational condition at supercritical speeds. The XFOIL and MSES computational codes were used to design, modify, and analyze the airfoil. The airfoil has enough thickness and performance to meet the requirements set for one of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's SensorCraft concepts: a joined-wing configuration with a diamond shape in planform and front views. This SensorCraft concept's geometry and operational altitudes and speeds were used to determine the airfoil design conditions. The airfoil has a drag bucket over a large range of lift coefficients