Supersonic/hypersonic Lift To Drag Ratios
At very high speeds, lift to drag ratios tend to be lower. Concorde had a lift/drag ratio of around 7 at Mach 2, whereas a 747 is around 17 at about mach 0.85.
Dietrich Küchemann developed an empirical relationship for predicting L/D ratio for high Mach:
where M is the Mach number. Windtunnel tests have shown this to be roughly accurate.
Read more about this topic: Lift-to-drag Ratio
Famous quotes containing the words lift, drag and/or ratios:
“The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, the whole is greater than its part; reaction is equal to action; the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time; and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“I know those little phrases that seem so innocuous and, once you let them in, pollute the whole of speech. Nothing is more real than nothing. They rise up out of the pit and know no rest until they drag you down into its dark.”
—Samuel Beckett (19061989)
“Typography is not only a technology but is in itself a natural resource or staple, like cotton or timber or radio; and, like any staple, it shapes not only private sense ratios but also patterns of communal interdependence.”
—Marshall McLuhan (19111980)