Talk:High-speed flight

This is the WHOLE article on "high-speed flight"?

Isn't there a hell of a lot more to high speed flight than just compressibility? Why didn't you just call the page "Compressibility (aviation)? "Compressibility in aircraft"? What about shock waves, wave drag, center-of-gravity changes, friction heating, engine efficiency, supersonic intake design? What IS "high-speed-flight"? Is it transonic, as suggested in this article, or is it Mach 7 in an X-15? I don't understand this at all. This is the only page on Wikipedia that appears to be about compressibility at all, and it's called "high-speed-flight", for some baffling reason..45Colt 07:30, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Okay now I am shaking my head- so if an aircraft is doing 600kts and pulls a high G turn the air above the wing is doing 1,200kts? This would be the equivalent of attaching a rocket to the upper wing surface.

At transonic speeds, if we quickly increase the AOA, the air above the wing doesn't go faster, the speed of sound drops due to the temperature/density/pressure drop brought on by the rapid angular change of the air flow over the upper wing surface. The slow speed version of this is the Prandtl-Glauert clouds (ectoplasm) seen above a wing on humid days or in high speed turns.

This is why all medium/high speed aircraft like airliners use a supercritical wing which is flatter on top and more cambered underneath. The flatter upper surface profile means less angular flow change, less press/temp/density change, so no standing shock waves (or at least smaller ones) The pick up the extra lift by having a reflex curve at the underside trailing edge and from the pronounced lower surface camber near the wing root. Just look at the underside of an A380! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Completeaerogeek (talk • contribs) 03:06, 19 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]