Tom Sarda, John Burk, and List -
The coke-bottle shape of supersonic aircraft results from a design concept
referred to as "The Area Rule" which implies that as a certain size frontal
area approaches Mach 1 the hole it punches gets larger than the actual frontal
area size. The coke-bottle shape allows the pressure to reduce so that a plane
with that shape at supersonic speed actually punches a smaller hole through
the atmosphere than it measures physically.
The rule itself determines where the coke-bottle shape is located on the
fuselage, and how deeply the waist of the coke-bottle is formed.
If anyone knows different or has more info please let us know - I asked an
design engineer from the defunct Starship program to give me a quick'n'dirty
explanation without the numbers and jargon when I was working at
Raytheon/Beech (now Hawker/Beech).
Chris Pile aka aircap
http://home.worldonline.co.za/~fanjet/NC-06.jpg Beech Starship (no
coke-bottle)
http://z.about.com/d/inventors/1/0/N/4/b_1.jpg Rockwell-Boeing B1
Lancer (coke-bottle)
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