Supersonic flight for commercial aviation is gaining a renewed interest, especially for business aviation, which demands the reduction of flight times for transcontinental routes. So far, the promise of civil supersonic flight has only been afforded by the Concorde and Tupolev T-144 aircraft. However, little or nothing can be found about the aerodynamics of these aeroshapes, the knowledge of which is extremely interesting to obtain before the development of the next-generation high-speed aircraft. Therefore, the present research effort aimed at filling in the lack of data on a Concorde-like aeroshape by focusing on evaluating the aerodynamics of a complete aircraft configuration under low-speed conditions, close to those of the approach and landing phase. In this framework, the present paper focuses on the CFD study of the longitudinal aerodynamics of a Concorde-like, tailless, delta-ogee wing seamlessly integrated onto a Sears–Haack body fuselage, suitable for civil transportation. The drag polar at a Mach number equal to 0.24 at a 30 m altitude was computed for a wide range of angles of attack (0∘,60∘), with a steady RANS simulation to provide the feedback of the aerodynamic behaviour post breakdown, useful for a preliminary design. The vortex-lift contribution to the aerodynamic coefficients was accounted for in the longitudinal flight condition. The results were in agreement with the analytical theory of the delta-wing. Flowfield sensitivity to the angle of attack at near-stall and post-stall flight attitudes confirmed the literature results. Furthermore, the longitudinal static stability was addressed. The CFD simulation also evidenced a static instability condition arising for 15∘≤α≤20∘ due to vortex breakdown, which was accounted for.

Reduction of atmospheric emissions is currently a mandatory requirement for aircraft manufacturers. Several studies performed on Blended Wing–Body configurations showed a promising capability of reducing fuel consumption by increasing, at the same time, passengers’ transport capabilities. Although several aerodynamic studies are available at transonic speeds, low-speed evaluations of aerodynamic performances of Blended Wing Body aircrafts are less investigated. In this framework, the present paper deals with the aerodynamic performance of the N2A aircraft prototype at low-Mach number conditions. Aircraft longitudinal aerodynamics is addressed at M∞=0.2 with steady state three-dimensional RANS simulations carried out at two Reynolds numbers equal to 6.60×106 and 1.27×108, respectively. The former refers to an experimental test campaign performed at NASA Langley 14-by-22 foot subsonic tunnel, while the latter is related to free-flight conditions close to an approach and landing phase. Flowfield simulations are performed using the Computational Fluid Dynamic code FLUENT and the SU2 open-source code, currently adopted for research applications. Numerical solutions are validated by using available experimental data with reference to lift, drag, pitching moment and drag polar estimations. Pre-stall and post-stall aerodynamic behaviour through mean flow-field visualization along with the comparison of pressure distributions at several AoAs is addressed. Furthermore, the effect of convective discretization on a numerical solution for SU2 is discussed. Results indicate a good agreement with available experimental predictions. The present study aims to bridge existing computations at a Eulerian low-Mach number, with RANS computations and constitutes a further test-case for SU2 code with respect to a full aircraft configuration.