Forum: F-35 Lightning II

The F-35C has been slated as being potentially slower in terms of acceleration and top speed due to enlarged wings and control surfaces (in addition to the extra weight).

Although induced drag from the wings will most likely be greater, the greater wing area also introduces the hypothesis of a possible lower AoA at similar speeds. Therefore, the possibility of a reduced attack and drag on the big ol' fuselage is introduced.

What I'd like to do with this topic is start a discussion based on what the F-16.net community thinks about the assumption that the fuselage will not be as efficient at generating lift as compared to the increased wing area, thus actually reducing drag on the CV.

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Extra wing length is always more efficient at creating lift with less drag then a fuselage lifting body design. But you have a place to put the engines, fuel, weapons, avionics, pilot, ect, ect, ect. You could just attach the wings and tail to a stream lined body like the Bell-X1 but what if you could get the streamlined body to produce lift as well and combined them with a set of wings? Hmmm, what would that look like? But don't forget you have to still be able to dog fight in it!

well, when compared to the A-B, the C has more wetted area so it will have more skin surface drag. It's wing loading will be much lower and as such so will it's lift coefficient and induced drag coefficient. This will help in the low speed realm (help offset the weight disadvantage that is) but will not help at all in the high speed and may significantly hinder trans/supersonic operations.

@pilotbrah..... Another thing you need to consider is that air around an airplane happens in three dimensions. So as you can probably guess most of the fourth generation jet fighters never under went computation fluid dynamic modeling or if they did it was very rudementry as most of them were designed in the era when the first pocket calculators were coming out in the early 1970's. It was only personal computers came cheap and powerful that real computation fluid dynamic anlysis could be considered in the design of an airplane. Here is a computer model of an F-18 under going Computational Fluid Dynamic Analysis. If you have any questions on CFD you can ask "sprstdlyscottsmn" as he is an expert on it. Wink

There is info on the web about F-35 & CFD FWIW.

Forum: F-35 Lightning II

F-35C and Airfoil/Control Surface Drag