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--- Trueblood- Funny, I was reading the very same DeskTop Aero webpage you linked to in your post. Great website. That's why we have these little get-togethers, to stimulate discussion and to remove the rust from being so long away from engineering college. Over the years I have had many such...

--- It's the difference between Figure A and Figure B in that link. ---

-- Yes there may be some shocks, but not those indicated by the term mach cone. More like wave drag. Not the same thing at all and mach cone does not occur in this speed range (M=0.82 ~ 0.95). Wave shocks are local, smallish shocks formed at points of compound curvature on the outside of the...

Mach cone is a supersonic phenomenon. It can't occur in subsonic flight, because sound travels faster than the airplane- by definition. The air molecules have time to adjust to the arrival of the airplane before it gets there. Mach cone however, does form in supersonic flight. By keeping the...

---- Kirby, I concur with your information. Of course the break points vary per an actual wing in question, although I concur with your suggested break points. One thing I wonder about here after reading over the other replies is, how we are defining the term "wave drag". My definition of...

--- My proposal that we limit the discussion to the subsonic flight domain was an attempt to avoid the whole mach cone issue. Mach cones are a supersonic kind of consideration, and yet swept wings are used in both flight regimes, supersonic and subsonic. So I thought limiting the question to...

Correction: taper does apply to subsonic airplanes, my mistake.

--- Ok let's limit the scenario to high subsonic speed. This leaves airplanes such as airliners and business jets mostly. A supersonic straight wing can be successful as we know in the F-104, but just to simplify the discussion let us take guns, taper, and mach cone out of the question because...

Someone mentioned taper, and I am not talking about that. Taper an engineering compromise aimed at achieving the most usable area for a given span. The goal is drag-reduction, optimized by a perfectly elliptical planform shape. Taper gives nice drag reduction with none of the manufacturing...

Nah what I am really talking about is, why is wing sweep used for 99% of the transonic aircraft designs we see in the modern age. I am asking is there a single reason that clinches the choice of sweep as opposed to the use of a similarly-capable high-speed straight wing? Per the F-104 fighter...

I have a B.S. degree in A.E. There is an irritating question on the topic of wing sweep that was not answered to my satisfaction. Wing sweep solves the problem of wave drag at transonic speeds and this is the first thing we learn. It acts by reducing the thickness-to-chord ratio the air flow...