Design-oriented leading-edge thrust force prediction for supersonic lifting surfaces

A design-oriented method for evaluating the leading-edge (LE) thrust force on supersonic lifting surfaces with subsonic LE is presented, The method is developed to overcome numerical noise and nonsmooth drag predictions observed when currently attainable LE-thrust techniques are used for wing planform shape optimization, The method is an extension of a design-oriented unsteady supersonic lifting surface capability developed previously for aeroservoelastic shape optimization of wings, It is a panel/lattice method where assumed pressure-weighting functions, taking the LE singularity into account, are prescribed to the LE panels while constant pressure panels are retained elsewhere. Explicit expressions for aerodynamic influence coefficients are retained over most of the wing, except for cases involving the LE panels, where numerical integration must be used, Planform shape sensitivities of the LE thrust and Tying pressures are obtained using a combination of analytic and semianalytic techniques, LE thrust force predictions for various configurations are in good agreement with known analytical solutions, Smooth and well-behaved LE thrust force and thrust force sensitivities predictions indicate that this method is suitable for wing-shape design optimization applications based on gradient-based mathematical programming techniques.