Lift-to-drag Ratio - Supersonic/hypersonic Lift To Drag Ratios

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.

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