Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2010
This paper presents an analysis of two canonical problems for the steady supersonic inviscid flow past a wing-body combination with the body nonlifting and the wings at a very small angle of attack. Pressure distributions in the vicinity of the lines separating the interaction regions from the remainder of the wing and body are determined from asymptotic expansions by modifying a method due to Friedlander, who considered the diffraction of sound pulses by a cylinder. In a manner similar to Keller's geometrical theory of diffraction the results of the canonical problem are directly applicable to the case where the cross section of the body is any closed convex curve which meets the wings at right angles. In the first canonical problem, the leading edge of the wings has no sweepback, that is, it is normal to the body surface. Here results are compared with those of an approach using boundary layer methods by Stewartson and of a Green's function method by Jones. In the second problem which is even more important in practice and has been neglected in the literature, the leading edge of the wings has positive sweepback; our results are valid provided that the leading edge of the wings is supersonic.