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Anti-shock bodies are pods placed at the trailing edge of the wings of some transonic aircraft wings in order to reduce wave drag as the aircraft enters the transonic regime (Mach 0.8–1.2). Most jet airliners have a cruising speed between Mach 0.8 and 0.85. For aircraft operating in the transonic regime, wave drag can be minimized by having a cross-sectional area which changes smoothly along the length of the aircraft. This is known as the area rule, and is the operating principle behind the design of anti-shock bodies. Reducing wave drag improves fuel economy.
On most jet airliners, the mechanisms for deploying the wing flaps are enclosed in fairings, called "flap track fairings", which also serve as anti-shock bodies.
Anti-shock bodies were concurrently developed by Richard Whitcomb at NASA and Dietrich Küchemann, a German aerodynamicist, in the early 1950s. Anti-shock bodies are sometimes known informally as Küchemann carrots because of their distinctive shape. The Handley-Page Victor bomber was particularly well-known for featuring a conspicuous pair of Küchemann carrots.
The Convair 990, notable for its anti-shock bodies, cruises at Mach 0.91[citation needed]. Like swept wings and supercritical airfoils, anti-shock bodies are also used on new slower jet aircraft like the Airbus A380 (Mach 0.85) and the Boeing 777 (Mach 0.84), integrated as flap tracks.[citation needed]
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