>>1144233This is what a real area ruled airliner would look like. Trust me the flap fairings, and wing box, don't do as great a job but good enough and overall the manufacturers are again more concerned with weight and stretching. And yes the 747's hump helped it combat wave drag, although I am not sure by how much. And admittedly the a380's box is pretty waspy.
If we had a sectional area graph of the 777, 747, and pic related we could compare them, but I can't find them. So all we can really do is guess and I bet that modern airliners have more wave drag than a wasp waist without area ruled wing boxes and fairings. And ofc the combination would be the best. I read on an
airliners.net forum that modern airliners have a pretty decent amount of wave drag but they are still able to find efficiency gains in materials (787) and engine (777) development so it's more important to have stretchability.
And i was originally attacked for posting a tear drop PROPELLER plane that wouldn't go transonic. As if I meant that a modern optimized fuselage would be a tear drop? LOL. Strawman really.
I do have questions though. What speed does wave drag really become a problem? At what speed do swept wings become a necessity? I'm guessing around 0.5 mach the effects start to take place and by mach .7 they are basically absolutely necessary. Or I could be off and it's like the effects start at .4 mach and by .6 the compromises are "needed" for efficient flight. I'm wondering this because maybe transonic flight is necessary to passengers today and fuel efficiency could be increased if airliners went just a bit slower.
And how do flying wings and blended wing bodies fair with wave drag? I would assume poorly? But maybe not... It seems like the thick part of the fuselage on the b2 is forward and the wings are swept so it gets by like that but Boeing's BWB concept seems like it would produce a lot of wave drag?
