A review of ONERA aerodynamic research in support of a future supersonic transport aircraft

The ONERA activities concerning the aerodynamics of the future supersonic t ransport aircraft are reviewed. Section 1 is devoted to the performance pre diction and detailed comparisons between CFD and wind-tunnel data are prese nted and discussed. Section 2 addresses the problem of the drag prediction in cruise flight conditions from wind-tunnel data. Skin friction coefficien ts values measured in flight are compared to the results of boundary layer computations. Section 3 is devoted to wing designs with numerical optimisat ion techniques. Several examples are presented and discussed. Results conce rning riblets and laminar flow control are given in Section 4 part which al so will present experiments carried out for attachment line contamination i nvestigation. Results from basic research on supersonic laminar flows are a lso be presented. Section 5 deals with activities on air intake aerodynamic s. After a brief recall of supersonic air intakes operational modes and a d escription of the Concorde air intake, comparisons between CFD and wind tun nel data on a generic 2D intake are presented. Basic experiments on intake internal flow are described and the problem of the internal shock control i s addressed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.