Biplane-Wing/Twin-Body-Fuselage Configuration for Innovative Supersonic Transport
In this paper, a biplane-wing/twin-body-fuselage configuration is discussed for advanced supersonic transport. The supersonic-biplane-wing concept has been proposed by Kusunose et al. (“Supersonic Biplane—A Review,” Progress in Aerospace Sciences, Vol. 47, No. 1, 2011, pp. 53–87), and a remarkable drag reduction in supersonic flow conditions has been demonstrated in the literatures. Motivated by the wave reduction effect of the supersonic biplane airfoils, a twin-body-fuselage concept has also been proposed by the present authors. Wave-drag reduction was achieved by an optimal twin-body-fuselage configuration. In this research, therefore, the biplane-wing concept and the twin-body-fuselage concept are merged to propose an innovative supersonic transport configuration. The wave-drag characteristics, as well as the wave-drag reduction, are illustrated by inviscid computational fluid dynamics computations at the design Mach number of 1.7. The inviscid (wave) drag of the proposed configuration is much smaller...