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1) ABSTRACT

A review of mathematical theories and research

activities conducted into variable sweep wings working
and performances from the 1930s till nowadays is
presented. The analysis made, gives a complete overview
of the improved aerodynamic characteristics in relation
to the three aeronautical speed regimes: subsonic,
transonic, supersonic. Data are presented to show the
main differences that occur between traditional and
variable sweep wings (VSW) planforms, i.e. wings able to
vary lee sweep in relation to the flight conditions and
requirements. Wings with variable back sweep (BSW)
were studied by a deeper point of view, while forward
sweep wings (FSW) were considered only to make
comparisons about the aircraft stability profile. Data are
shown that highlight the positive and negative effects of
leading edge variable sweep as to the in-flight
optimization design points, related to each speed regime.
Finally, in order to show a concrete application of this
technology, some aircraft are presented.

2) INTRODUCTION

Presumably, after decades of designing and building airplanes, a person would suspect that all
airplanes with a similar purpose would look like the same. All fighters would look alike, all
passenger jets would look alike, and so on. Nevertheless, this has not happened. Even more than five
decades after the dawn of the jet age (1940s), jet fighters designed around the same time can look
radically different. The level of technological capability can explain most of these differences;
cultural influences are also a factor, although generally of less importance. Aeronautical engineers,
like any other group of people sharing similar interests, can become enthusiastic about certain ideas
at the same time and overlook their drawbacks. That is what happened with variable-sweep wings.
The swept-back wing used for the B-47 and common to many aircraft that followed demonstrated
that airplanes could use wing designs other than the straight wing to achieve certain performance
goals. Straight wings were clearly advantageous for short takeoffs and landings, low speed, and fuelefficient flight, but swept wings were ideal for high-speed, particularly supersonic flight.
All aircraft represent numerous compromises made by their designers. Some aircraft need to fly at
very high speeds whereas others need to fly very slowly. Some have to be highly fuel-efficient
whereas others have to accomplish their missions without regard to cost. Designers, therefore, try to
optimize each aircraft so that it accomplishes its mission as best as it can. But sometimes aircraft are
required to do things that demand design features that oppose each other. The best example is an
aircraft that can fly at high supersonic speeds but still needs to land at relatively low speeds, such as
on the deck of an aircraft carrier.
Experiments with variable-sweep wings began in France around 1911. Dr. Adolf Busemann, a
German designer, presented a theoretical concept for a practical moveable wing at a convention in
Rome just before World War II. His theory, supported with research by Dr. Albert Betz of the
Gttingen Aerodynamics Research Institute, led Messerschmitt to begin developing in 1942 a
variable-sweep wing design, the P-1101. The war ended before the aircraft could be produced. It is
also doubtful that existing engines provided high speed enough for the design to make an
appreciable difference in performance.
Beginning in the late 1940s, as technological capabilities improved, designers in the United States
began to examine the possibility of moving the wing of an aircraft while it was in flight, so that it
extended straight out from the fuselage for takeoff and landing and swept back for high-speed
operations. Such an airplane might be able to accomplish its demanding missions without paying a
performance penalty.
In the early 1950s, Bell Aircraft built the experimental X-5 aircraft for the U.S. Air Force and the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It had a wing that could be moved
backward and forward in flight - a variable-sweep wing. Grumman Aircraft built the F-10-F for the
U.S. Navy, also with variable-sweep wings. Both designs proved that the concept of movable wings
worked.
A few years later, in 1959, engineers at NASA's Langley Research Centre discovered the two-pivot
variable-sweep concept-as opposed to the single-pivot used in earlier experiments. This
development led to the success of the variable-wing idea.

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In the late 1950s, the U.S. Air Force submitted specifications for a plane with variable-sweep wings
that could fly at supersonic speeds and cruise for long distances at high altitudes to reach its distant
targets. Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara wanted to combine this requirement with Army
needs for close air support and a Navy requirement for air defence of the naval fleet. This led in
December 1960 to the Tactical Fighter Experimental (TFX) program. This consisted in an aircraft
suitable for use by the Air Force, which would operate in the close air support role for Army ground
forces and in its own roles, and by the Navy in aircraft carrier roles.
The Department of Defence selected General Dynamics to develop two versions of the TFX, the F111A for the Air Force and the F-111B for the Navy. Roll out took place on October 15, 1964, and
Secretary McNamara stated that the Air Force and Navy now had an aircraft with the range of a
transport, capacity and endurance of a bomber, and agility of a fighter. However, the Navy cancelled
its portion of the program, in August 1968, finding that the plane was too heavy for use aboard
aircraft carriers. Commonality between the aircraft used by the two services had also dropped
significantly by that time with the adoption of different engines. The Navy subsequently selected
Grumman Aircraft to develop the F-14 Tomcat interceptor, which also had a variable-sweep, or
"swing-wing".
The F-111 had numerous problems during its early service, including problems with cracks in the
large gearbox used to move the wings. The plane saw service in Vietnam, and the F-111F saw
considerable action during the Gulf War. Perhaps its greatest success occurred in a combined U.S.
Air Force and U.S. Navy attack on Libya and its terrorist government in mid-April 1986, at El
Dorado Canyon.
The F-14 adopted by the Navy incorporated a swing-wing that could be manually controlled by the
pilot or shifted automatically according to the plane's speed. It moved forward to allow the plane to
land on tiny aircraft carrier decks at relatively low speeds and backward as the plane dashed out to
intercept Soviet bombers. More than 700 F-14s were produced, in several variants, and more than 70
of them were exported to Iran in the 1970s. It first entered service in the mid-1970s, and was used
till 2001. Despite its long service, the F-14 has been the most expensive interceptor aircraft to
operate in the U.S. Army.
During the 1970s, an Israeli Air Force (IAF) pilot evaluated the Navy F-14 and the Air Force F-15
Eagle for service in the IAF. He walked around both airplanes and counted their control surfaces
such as ailerons, flaps, slats, and speed brakes. The F-14 had more control surfaces and the pilot
determined that this would make it more difficult and expensive to maintain; for this and many other
reasons, the IAF subsequently purchased the F-15 Eagle. In many ways this was an omen, for the
variable-sweep wing, the largest moving part ever developed for an aircraft, proved to be more
uncertain than it was worth for many aircraft.
But for a period, variable-sweep wings were in vogue and more than a half dozen major military
aircraft were designed with variable sweep wings during the 1960s and 1970s, with the number of
swing-wing aircraft numbering in the thousands. The Soviets developed the Su-24 and MiG-27
attack planes and the MiG-23 fighter, all with swing-wings. The European consortium Panavia
developed the Tornado, produced in both ground attack and interceptor versions. It too had a
variable-sweep wing. Aircraft designers also applied variable-sweep wings to large bomber-size
aircraft. North American Rockwell began the B-1A bomber in the early 1970s as the U.S. Air
Force's new strategic bomber (it was cancelled in the late 1970s and revived a few years later). The
Soviet designed firm Tupolev to develop the Tu-22M Backfire naval attack bomber and the Tu-160
Blackjack strategic bomber.

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By the 1980s, however, no one was designing variable-sweep aircraft and no improvements on this
technology have been incorporated in new production military aircraft in the last 15 years, although
work is still being carried out on wings that move in other ways. The technology of variable-sweep
wings lasted little more than 20 years before being phased out, although hundreds of aircraft
continued to fly for years.
There were several reasons for the move away from this technology, but the primary one was that
the large metal gearbox needed to move the wings was complicated and heavy. This increased
maintenance requirements and decreased fuel performance. An aircraft capable of moving its wing
forward for fuel-efficient flight could never be as efficient as an airplane equipped with a straight
wing. The same was true for aircraft with swept-back wings; they would always be more efficient
than swing-wings aircraft. The B-1B Lancer, for example, has never been able to achieve its original
range requirements and has to refuel in the air more often than planned. It also rarely flew at the
high speed, allowed by sweeping back the wings.

Ultimately, however, a tendency inversion in the research activities seems to be happened. In the last
fifteen years, DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) and NASA (National
Aeronautic & Space Agency) have invested millions of dollars on an experimental secret program to
develop a high supersonic manoeuvrability aircraft. Their aim was reached by the X29 project,
with the creation of an aircraft with forward swept wing. The aircraft had the expected project
requirements but was very unstable in the subsonic regime and could not reach speeds higher than
Mach 2. Thus, the two agencies continued their research activities till arriving to the Bird of Pray
project realization. A new era opened: the first forward variable sweep wings aircraft was created.
Being the X29 successor, it maintained the high manoeuvrability capability and , moreover , it was
able to fly till Mach 3, thanks to the dart configuration (with the wings completely closed). On
September 2002, it was unveiled for the first time as, it was no more necessary to conceal its
existence.

3) THE AIRCRAFT

3.1) Aerodynamic Drag

Very narrow gains (1 % or less) can translate into a change of technology. It is widely assumed that
the fuel crisis of the 1970s created the need to invest in drag reduction technology for aircraft
transport. However, the problem is wider than that, since all the aerodynamic systems use external
power that is partially dissipated due to drag forces.

Effects of Drag Reduction

For example, a reduction in the drag coefficient of an ordinary passenger car from CD = 0.4 to
CD=0.3 would improve the fuel consumption by 7.5 %. This saving multiplied by the number of
road vehicles in Europe and North America yields a figure (at least 10 billion gallons/year) that
could affect the price of the crude oil in the world markets.
The reduction of 10 % drag on a large military transport aircraft would save over 10 million gallons
of fuel over the life-time of the aircraft. A 15 % drag reduction on the Airbus A340-300B would
yield a 12 % fuel saving, other parameters being constant ( Mertens , 1998).
The effects resulting from using VSWs, instead of fixed one, will be described later in terms of
reduction of fuel consumption and flexibility of mission profile.

Flow Physics

The fundamental mechanisms by which drag is produced in steady state conditions can be reduced
to the following:
Viscous drag (or skin friction drag) is due to the stresses on the aerodynamic surfaces and in the
boundary layer. The decreased momentum in the flowfield results in a corresponding loss of
momentum of the aerodynamic system. Some of the physical aspects involved in the viscous drag
loss are: presence of shear layers, turbulent transition, and boundary layer separation.
If we are in a laminar flow conditions it is computed by:

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While if the flow becomes turbulent its evaluated by the formula:

The amount of energy losses depends largely on the aero-hydrodynamic system. On a sailing boat it
can range between 1/3 and (nearly) the total drag, depending on the speed of the craft (at low speeds
the viscous drag is large, in percent, whereas the wave drag is low). Some typical viscous losses are
listed below:
Table 1: Summary of viscous drag
Supersonic fighter

25-30 %

Large transport aircraft

40 %

Executive aircraft

50 %

VTOL aircraft

70-80 %

Underwater bodies

70 %

Ships at low/high speed

90-30 %

Drag due to lift : this type of drag is due to the vorticity produced by a lifting wing (induced drag
or vortex drag) and it is expressed as momentum deficiency in the wake. This type of drag can be a
drawback of high-lift systems. Vortices are released during flow separation and trail downstream to
form structured or unstructured wake patterns.
The dissipation of these vortices farther downstream is one of the sources of loss, but this is of
viscous nature. The inviscid nature of the drag is also due to the downwash created in the slipstream,
which on turns is related to an induced angle of attack.
To calculate the induced drag, we can use the relation:

CDi k ' CL2

, where k is defined as k ' k

1
.
A Re

It is function of: the Oswald Coefficient e , the wing geometry ( throughout the aspect ratio AR ) and
the k factor, that shows the dependency from another drag typology, called Form Drag, due to

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pressure variations of the flow along the wing surface. Usually it is considered as a percentage of the
induced drag for the reason that it cannot be estimated numerically.
For a straight wing it is:

While for a swept wing, it varies with the sweep angle and the Aspect Ratio:

Interference is the effect of the presence of one body on the aerodynamics of a second body. The
interference drag is a system drag that is present even in absence of viscous effects (ideal fluid) and
non-lifting conditions. Since interference occurs in many practical situations, interference drag is a
separate topic.

Wave drag in aerodynamics is drag associated with the shock wave and shock-induced separation.
More exactly, it is associated with the energy radiated away from the vehicle in the form of pressure
waves in much the same way as a fast moving ship causes waves in the water surface. It appears at
transonic and supersonic speeds. The problem is more general in hydrodynamics, since wave
propagation occurs at all speeds for all types of sailing vessels and for most cases of submerged
bodies.
There are several ways of dealing with wave drag: use of transonic/supersonic area ruling for wingbody combinations; use of supercritical airfoils, thin wing sections, wing sweep, low-aspect ratio
wings, boundary layer control, blunt leading edge (at hypersonic speeds). Less orthodox methods
include oblique and anti-symmetric wings (wings never built, in fact).
At transonic speeds, some of the main concerns are driving the drag divergence upward, removing
the buffeting and the possible shock stall.
At supersonic and hypersonic speeds a few peculiar problems appear: namely, aero-thermodynamic
heating, and structural stiffness compatible with volume distribution and wing thickness.

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Summarizing all the previous considerations about drag, one can describe the drag acting on a finite
span wing or on a complete aircraft as:

CD CD0 CDi CDw

The first term C D 0 is the drag coefficient, also known as Parasite drag coefficient, because of its
independence of the lift coefficient. In fact, it therefore exists when the configuration generates zero
lift and brings inside the skin friction and form drag components. Usually its value for a jet fighter is
about 0.0150.03, where the wings may account for the 50% of it.
The second term C Di is the drag due to lift coefficient that has a quadratic correlation with the lift
coefficient and accounts for deviations from straight wing planforms like low aspect ratio and
sweptback wings.
The third term C Dw is the wave drag coefficient and represents the compressibility effects together
with the skin friction drag and form drag, included in the drag due to lift coefficient. It is generated
when the free stream Mach number is sufficiently large so that regions of supersonic flow exist in
the flowfield. The designer can delay and/or reduce the compressibility drag rise by using low aspect
ratio wings, by sweeping wings, and by using area rules.

Speed-induced Drag

Another classification sometimes used is that according to speed. The speed (e.g. Reynolds and
Mach numbers) have, in fact, one of the most important effects on both the drag build-up and the
drag level.
Speed is related to the flow regime: laminar, transitional, and turbulent. This is a major problem in
all aerodynamic systems. Laminar boundary layers are characterized by minimum skin friction drag.
Laminar boundary layers are generally assumed to keep laminar at Reynolds numbers
, to be
transitional at about
, and turbulent above this value.
The actual transitional Reynolds numbers may depend on the specific case and several side
constraints.
Flat plate, circular cylinder, sphere and cones have been widely studied over the years, and the
amount of data collected is staggering: in particular, drag data are available from the smallest
Reynolds numbers (unity and below), to the largest Mach numbers (hypersonic speeds). The data
witness the importance of this set of bodies as a limiting case of real life problems.