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There are pressure diagrams of some canopies either on a previous thread here or on YouTube. As I recall, the was a bubble canopy P-51 and either an earlier P-51 or a P-57 razorback.Which features influence the aerodynamics of fighter canopies and to what extent?
Of course there is the angled windshield and the flushness of struts. But what about curved windows?
Which fighters do you think have especially bad or good canopy aerodynamics?
I think that the Brits wanted an optically flat windscreen exactly perpendicular to the pilot's line of sight to eliminate distortion while dive bombing. I've spent a lot of time studying the Skua and it's the only thing that makes sense.It doesn't get much worse than this:View attachment 776663 Blackburn Skua
Jedi fighter. Use the Force.Aerodynamically perfect canopy. Surprisingly, the pilots didn't appreciate it.
View attachment 777991
This guy didn't stop there. Here's one of his latest true Jedi projects.Jedi fighter. Use the Force.
This guy didn't stop there. Here's one of his latest true Jedi projects.
View attachment 778043
However, it is a Mach2 front-line bomber with a 1,500 kg bomb load and ski landing gear for landing on unpaved airfields according to a design proposed in 1959.It looks SR-71-ish.
Would that be the reason for presumable dive instability in late P47's vs the razorbacks?One thing that's often overlooked is that the top of the canopy, where the curve reverses from up to down, is often a contributor to critical Mach number, even on propeller planes. In the process of going up and over and back down, the local airflow undergoes quite a bit of acceleration and compression shock waves can form there. It's an interesting subject to read up on.
I have problems with downloading the doc.Some light reading from 1937:
Unfortunately, Hathitrust doesn't have all of them. It looks like someone got tired of scanning and started saying "not scanned because of copyright issues". I don't find any beyond R&M 2169Edit: I think it is working.
It's ARC R&M 1811 from the 1937 v. 51 p. 225.
If the pdf doesn't load, use this link and go to page 225.
Hathitrust has all the rest of the ARC R&M's if you have a bit of a search.
Above report (CFD analysis of the P51B/D, Spitfire IX and FW-190 A-8 and D-9) specifically notes that there were aerodynamics issues with the Spitfire's forward windscreen.
Wartime solutions (tested but not implemented) to the windscreen/canopy offered improvements of 7-12 mph in top speed.
Thanks - I wrote it!
Thanks - I wrote it!