UNIT 5

TRANSONIC FLOW OVER WING

Lower and Upper Critical Mach Numbers

 In aerodynamics, the critical Mach

number (Mcr or M*) of an aircraft is the
lowest Mach number at which the airflow
over some point of the aircraft reaches the
speed of sound, but does not exceed it.
 At the lower critical Mach number,
airflow around the entire aircraft is
subsonic.
 Supersonic aircraft such as Concorde and
combat aircraft also have an upper critical
Mach number at which the airflow
around the entire aircraft is supersonic.
 Lower and Upper Critical Mach Numbers
• For an aircraft in flight, the speed of the airflow around the aircraft differs considerably in
places from the airspeed of the aircraft; this is due to the airflow having to speed up and
slow down as it travels around the aircraft's structure.
• When the aircraft's airspeed reaches the critical Mach number, the speed of the airflow in
some areas near the airframe reaches the speed of sound, even though the aircraft itself
has an airspeed lower than Mach 1.0. This creates a weak shock wave.
• As the aircraft exceeds the critical Mach number, its drag coefficient increases suddenly,
causing dramatically increased drag, and, in an aircraft not designed for transonic or
supersonic speeds, changes to the airflow over the flight control surfaces lead to
deterioration in control of the aircraft.
• In aircraft not designed to fly at or above the critical Mach number, the shock waves that
form in the airflow over the wing and tailplane are sufficient to stall the wing, render the
control surfaces ineffective, or lead to loss of control of the aircraft (such as Mach tuck,
when shock waves in the airflow over the elevator send the aircraft into an uncontrollable
dive).
 Lower and Upper Critical Mach Numbers

• These problematic phenomena appearing at or above the critical Mach number

became known as compressibility. Compressibility led to a number of accidents
involving high-speed military and experimental aircraft in the 1930s and 1940s.
• Although unknown at the time, compressibility was the cause of the phenomenon
known as the sound barrier. 1940s-era military subsonic aircraft, such as the
Supermarine Spitfire, Bf 109, P-51 Mustang, Gloster Meteor, He 162, and P-80,
have relatively thick, unswept wings, and are incapable of reaching Mach 1.0 in
controlled flight.
• In 1947, Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 (also with an unswept wing, but a much
thinner one), reaching Mach 1.06 and beyond, and the sound barrier was finally
broken.
 Lower and Upper Critical Mach Numbers
• Supersonic aircraft, such as Concorde, Tu-144, the English Electric Lightning,
Lockheed F-104, Dassault Mirage III, and MiG 21, are designed to exceed Mach
1.0 in level flight, and are therefore designed with very thin wings. Their critical
Mach numbers are higher than those of subsonic and transonic aircraft, but are
still less than Mach 1.0.
• The actual critical Mach number varies from wing to wing. In general, a thicker
wing will have a lower critical Mach number, because a thicker wing deflects the
airflow passing around it more than a thinner wing does, and thus accelerates the
airflow to a faster speed.
• For instance, the fairly-thick wing on the P-38 Lightning has a critical Mach
number of about .69. The aircraft could occasionally reach this speed in dives,
leading to a number of crashes.
• The Supermarine Spitfire's much thinner wing gave it a considerably higher
critical Mach number (about 0.89).
Critical Mach Number
Drag divergence Mach number

The drag-divergence Mach number

(not to be confused with critical Mach
number) is the Mach number at
which the aerodynamic drag on an
airfoil or airframe begins to increase
rapidly as the Mach number
continues to increase. This increase
can cause the drag coefficient to rise to
more than ten times its low-speed
value.
 Drag divergence Mach number
• The value of the drag-divergence Mach number is typically greater than 0.6;
therefore it is a transonic effect. The drag-divergence Mach number is usually close
to, and always greater than, the critical Mach number. Generally, the
drag coefficient peaks at Mach 1.0 and begins to decrease again after the transition
into the supersonic regime above approximately Mach 1.2.
• The large increase in drag is caused by the formation of a shock wave on the upper
surface of the airfoil, which can induce flow separation and
adverse pressure gradients on the aft portion of the wing. This effect requires that
aircraft intended to fly at supersonic speeds have a large amount of thrust.
• In early development of transonic and supersonic aircraft, a steep dive was often
used to provide extra acceleration through the high-drag region around Mach 1.0.
This steep increase in drag gave rise to the popular false notion of an unbreakable
sound barrier, because it seemed that no aircraft technology in the foreseeable
future would have enough propulsive force or control authority to overcome it.
Indeed, one of the popular analytical methods for calculating drag at high speeds,
the Prandtl–Glauert rule, predicts an infinite amount of drag at Mach 1.0.
 Drag divergence Mach number

• Two of the important technological advancements that arose out of attempts to

conquer the sound barrier were the Whitcomb area rule and the supercritical
airfoil. A supercritical airfoil is shaped specifically to make the drag-divergence
Mach number as high as possible, allowing aircraft to fly with relatively lower
drag at high subsonic and low transonic speeds.
• These, along with other advancements including computational fluid dynamics,
have been able to reduce the factor of increase in drag to two or three for modern
aircraft designs.
• Drag-divergence Mach numbers Mdd for a given family of propeller airfoils can be
approximated by Korn's relation:
Drag divergence Mach number
Drag Divergence Mach number
Drag Divergence Mach number
Sweepback of the wing
Sweepback of the wing
Sound barrier

 The sound barrier or sonic barrier is the

large increase in aerodynamic drag and other
undesirable effects experienced by an aircraft
or other object when it approaches the
speed of sound.
 When aircraft first approached the speed of
sound, these effects were seen as constituting
a barrier, making faster speeds very difficult
or impossible.
 The term sound barrier is still sometimes
used today to refer to aircraft approaching
supersonic flight in this high drag regime.
Flying faster than sound produces a
sonic boom.
 Supercritical airfoil

• A supercritical airfoil (supercritical aerofoil in British English) is an airfoil

designed primarily to delay the onset of wave drag in the transonic speed range.
• Supercritical airfoils are characterized by their flattened upper surface, highly
cambered ("downward-curved") aft section, and larger leading-edge radius
compared with NACA 6-series laminar airfoil shapes.
• Standard wing shapes are designed to create lower pressure over the top of the
wing. Both the thickness distribution and the camber of the wing determine how
much the air accelerates around the wing.
• As the speed of the aircraft approaches the speed of sound, the air accelerating
around the wing reaches Mach 1 and shockwaves begin to form. The formation of
these shockwaves causes wave drag. Supercritical airfoils are designed to
minimize this effect by flattening the upper surface of the wing.
Supercritical airfoil

Conventional (1) and supercritical (2) airfoils at

identical free stream Mach number. Illustrated
are: A – supersonic flow region, B – shock
wave, C – area of separated flow. The
supersonic flow over a supercritical airfoil
terminates in a weaker shock, thereby
postponing shock-induced boundary layer
separation.
 Shock Induced Separation
• The flow in a boundary layer can be either laminar or turbulent. Laminar flow is
orderly and stratified without interchange of fluid particles between individual
layers, whereas in turbulent flow there is significant exchange of fluid
perpendicular to the flow direction.
• The type of flow greatly influences the physics of the boundary layer. For
example, due to the greater extent of mass interchange, a turbulent boundary layer
is thicker than a laminar one and also features a steeper velocity gradient close to
the surface, i.e. the flow speed increases more quickly as we move away from the
wall.
• Over flat surfaces we can suitably ignore any changes in pressure in the flow
direction. Under these conditions, the boundary layer remains stable but grows in
thickness in the flow direction. This is, of course, an idealised scenario and in
real-world applications, such as curved wings, the flow is most likely
experiencing an adverse pressure gradient, i.e. the pressure increases in the flow
direction.
 Shock Induced Separation
• Under these conditions the boundary layer can become unstable and separate from
the surface. The boundary layer separation induces a second type of drag, known
as pressure drag. This type of drag is predominant for non-streamlined bodies,
e.g. a golfball flying through the air or an aircraft wing at a high angle of attack.
 Shock Induced Separation

• Right at the front of the cylinder fluid particles must come to rest. This point is
aptly called the stagnation point and is the point of maximum pressure (to
conserve energy the pressure needs to fall as fluid velocity increases, and vice
versa).
• Further downstream, the curvature of the cylinder causes the flow lines to curve,
and in order to equilibrate the centripetal forces, the flow accelerates and the fluid
pressure drops. Hence, an area of accelerating flow and falling pressure occurs
between the stagnation point and the poles of the cylinder.
• Once the flow passes the poles, the curvature of the cylinder is less effective at
directing the flow in curved streamlines due to all the open space downstream of
the cylinder. Hence, the curvature in the flow reduces and the flow slows down,
turning the previously favourable pressure gradient into an adverse pressure
gradient of rising pressure.
 Shock Induced Separation

• The difference between the flow velocity close to the wall and the mainstream is
more pronounced and the boundary layer grows more quickly. If the adverse
pressure gradient acts over a sufficiently extended distance, the deceleration in the
flow will be sufficient to reverse the direction of flow in the boundary layer.
• Hence the boundary layer develops a point of inflection, known as the point
of boundary layer separation, beyond which a circular flow pattern is established.