Anti-shock body

Anti-shock bodies or Küchemann carrots are pods placed at the trailing edge of a subsonic aircraft's wings in order to reduce wave drag, thus improving fuel economy, as the aircraft enters the transonic flight regime (Mach 0.8–1.2). Most jet airliners have a cruising speed between Mach 0.8 and 0.85. For aircraft operating in the transonic regime, wave drag can be minimized by having a cross-sectional area which changes smoothly along the length of the aircraft. This is known as the area rule, and is the operating principle behind the design of anti-shock bodies.

On most jet airliners, the mechanisms for deploying the wing flaps are enclosed in fairings, called "flap track fairings", which also serve as anti-shock bodies.

Anti-shock bodies were concurrently developed by Richard Whitcomb at NASA and Dietrich Küchemann, a German aerodynamicist, in the early 1950's. The Handley-Page Victor bomber was particularly well-known for featuring a conspicuous pair of Küchemann carrots, so-called because of their distinctive shape.

The Convair 990, notable for its anti-shock bodies, cruises at Mach 0.91. Unlike swept wings and supercritical airfoils, anti-shock bodies are not used on new slower jet airliners like the Cessna Citation X (Mach 0.82), the Airbus A380 (Mach 0.85) and the Boeing 777 (Mach 0.84).

ee also

*Aerodynamics

References

External links

* [http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/aerodynamics/q0240.shtml AerospaceWeb: Whitcomb Area Rule & Küchemann Carrots]