Drag

Abstract

Compressibility drag is the increment in drag associated with increases in Mach number from some reference condition. Generally, the reference condition is taken to be M = 0.5 since the effects of compressibility are known to be small here at typical conditions. Thus, compressibility drag contains a component at zero-lift and a lift-dependent component but includes only the increments due to Mach number (CL and Re are assumed to be constant.)