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The results of a design investigation of some unconventional airplane configurations are reported in this paper. The viability of designing canard and 3-surface airplanes to meet commuter airline needs was investigated. This study was conducted on an airplane designed to carry 30 passengers on 600 n.m. stage lengths, cruising at 0.6 Mach number at an altitude of 28,000 feet. A test ride quality evaluation was also carried out. This indicated that, although considerable performance improvement was possible over existing airplanes of the same type, active ride augmentation systems were needed to achieve airliner levels of comfort. All three airplanes looked good in terms of mission fuel consumption and climb terms. The 3-surface configuration managed to edge out the other two in those same terms.

This paper describes work done under a NASA-Langley grant at the university of Kansas Flight Research Laboratory in the area of natural laminar flow and regional aircraft. The focus of this paper is on the application of natural laminar flow over various major wetted areas. In particular, efforts were concentrated on analyzing the potential benefits of achieving extensive laminar flow on the wing, empennage, and fuselage. The effect of the presence of large amounts of laminar flow is evaluated in terms of performance and efficiency improvement over an all-turbulent baseline aircraft. An introduction is given to the concept of regional aircraft, and the aerodynamic characteristics are compared to those of other airplane classes. Some recent aerodynamic developments are presented that justify, to a certain extent, the assumptions made concerning the amount of natural laminar flow that is possible for each surface.