Effects of wing geometry on wing-body-tail interference in subsonic flow

Extensive wind tunnel tests were performed on several wing- body-tail combinations in subsonic flow to study the effects of wing geometric parameters on the flow field over the tail. For each configuration, tail surface pressure distribution, as well as the velocity contour at a plane perpendicular to the flow direction behind the wing was measured. The results show a strong effect of wing to tail span ratio, as well as wing aspect ratio, on the flowfield downstream of the wing. For low sweep wings, as those considered here, wing and body interference effects on the tail are associated with the wing tip vortex and nose-body vortex.