The students wanted to investigate this behavior, but needed to come up with a sturdy and accurately fabricated model for their test. Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier half a century ago, in the X-1 experimental aircraft. Yet even today most military aircraft and all but one commercial jetliner are limited to subsonic speeds. Many issues have prevented the proliferation of supersonic aircraft, but one of the major problems is that they aren't very efficient. Because of these unique characteristics of waveriders at high speeds, most of the research done so far has been in the hypersonic range, typically Mach 5 and above.
Colored lines represent the shape of the shock wave.
After lamination, the model has the look, feel, and strength of wood, and its dimensions are accurate to well within one-hundredth of an inch. The project involved the fabrication and experimental testing of three specific waverider shapes. Using software developed by Lobbia in AMES 157 the previous year, the geometry for each specific design was obtained in an AutoCAD DXF-format file, which specifies the lines and polygons of an object's external surface. These models were outfitted with strain gauges to determine the lift and drag at various velocities, allowing characterization of the low-speed performance of a waverider body. One of the Waverider Shapes in the Wind Tunnel.