Abstract:
Strut braced wing (SBW) configuration enables planes to have larger aspect ratio, smaller wing thickness and sweep angle compared to a traditional cantilever wing, leading to lower induced drag, lower wave drag and larger laminar flow region on the wing. This makes SBW a potential choice for new configuration airplanes in the future. This paper focused on the aerodynamic design of SBW under high subsonic condition based on N-S(Navier-Stokes) equations. The result shows that under the conditions of cruising Mach number 0.7 and design lift coefficient 0.6, the non-strut braced wing configuration causes a 35% increment of the lift-to-drag ratio to conventional cantilever wing-body combination configuration and the strut only causes a 6.3% decrement of the lift-to-drag ratio to the wing-body configuration. The results illustrate that the SBW configuration is one of the candidates of future transonic transports which can provide significant performance enhancement over existing transonic transport concept. The effects of the shape and position parameters and the shape modification of the inner and lower wing on the strut braced wing were also studied. The result shows that the upper shape, chord length, relative thickness, spanwise position, torsion angle distribution of the strut and the shape of the lower wing have a great influence on the aerodynamics of the strut braced wing configuration.