Experimental studies have been conducted to assess Reynolds and Mach n
umber effects on a supercritical multielement airfoil. The airfoil is
representative of the stall-critical station of an advanced transport
design. The experimental work was conducted as part of a cooperative p
rogram between the Douglas Aircraft Company and the NASA Langley Resea
rch Center to improve current knowledge of high-lift flows and to deve
lop a validation data base with practical geometries/conditions for em
erging computational methods. This article describes results obtained
for both landing and takeoff multielement airfoils (four- and three-el
ement configurations) for a variety of Mach/Reynolds number combinatio
ns up to flight conditions. Effects on maximum lift are considered for
the landing configurations, and effects on both lift and drag are rep
orted for the takeoff geometry. The present test results revealed cons
iderable maximum lift effects on the three-element landing configurati
on for Reynolds number variations, and significant Mach number effects
on the four-element airfoil.