The Mark 10B is a design developed by Rick Newlands, an aeronautical engineer, member of STAAR Research and head of Waverider development in AspireSpace. The Mark 10B waverider is based on "viscous optimised" waverider geometries which emerged from computational fluid dynamics work done at the University of Maryland, and elsewhere in the U.S.A., in the late 1980`s, as part of the "new hypersonics".

Such shapes have parabolesque leading edge planforms, and an underside cavity which is partially filled while still retaining sharp leading edges. The Mk 10B was found to have too shallow an upper fuselage to prevent its subsonic lifting vortices interacting with each other in an unstable way at the severe average sweepback angle of 80 degrees, so this design was discontinued as it would require artificial stability augmentation via computerised flight-controls.


[Waverider Home | AspireSpace Home | Mark 11 | Mark 14 | Mark 15 | Mark 10B]


This page is maintained by Richard Osborne
Last Update: May 1996

© AspireSpace