Minimum-wave-drag Airfoil Sections for Arrow Wings

A linearized theoretical analysis has been made to determine minimum-wave-drag airfoil sections for arrow wings having the same airfoil sections at all spanwise stations. The drag of the wings was minimized subject to the condition of either a given thickness ratio at a specified chordwise location or a given volume. Numerical computations of the airfoil shape and wing wave drag were performed for a delta wing and for an arrow wing having a ratio of the tangent of the trailing-edge sweep angle to the tangent of the leading-edge sweep angle of 0.4. The range of the ratio of the tangent of the leading-edge sweep angle to the tangent of the Mach line sweep angle extended from 0 (two-dimensional) to 2.5.