Which has higher performance canard or delta wings?

Question

To be a little more specific, im talking about in terms of stall ratius, performance at high gs, and turn radius.

Answer 1

Let me be a "little more specific" Tom Cruise. You get in your swept wing F-14 and I'll get in my F16. I'll take you on day or night and let's see who out maneuvers who. I'll do you one even better. Why don't you and your buddy, David S. , go get in two different planes ? You, in your  F-14, and David S. in the Mig 31, a.k.a Firefox with canards. Then, I'll get into my F16 and take you both on at the same time. How's that?

Answer 2

okay, first, most delta winged combat planes have canards. This is because putting "elevators" in the trailing edge of the delta wing isn't as good as a plain tail mounted "elevators". In other words, delta wing and canards go well together. Canards can also be mounted on traditional winged airplanes.

Delta wings enhance high speed performance. Delta winged planes are hard to control at slow speeds, such as during the landing approach. Delta wing-ed planes usually present a larger target. Also, they bleed off speed much faster during high G turns. The adding of canards somewhat compensates for this drawback but doesn't eliminate it.

Canards are "elevators" placed in front of the wings. Apparently, they're pretty good at making the aircraft more maneuverable. They also reduce the likelihood of a fatal or uncontrollable stall because the canard wings will stall before the main wings thus dropping the nose except in very rare circumstances. They also stabilize very unstable, negative tendency aircraft. I dunno how exactly this works, something to do with center of gravity I think.

I can't answer about the turn radius of delta wing-ed planes, but the canard-ed planes have a turn radius equal or better turn radius than traditional tail elevator planes. However, the tail mounted elevator planes have a quicker snap/instantaneous turn radius. The canard-ed planes can turn reasonably tight turn radius and they can sustain that turn for a longer amount of time.

Hard question because the two aren't really of the same category. One is control surfaces and the other is wings. And both are usually used together.

Answer 3

delta wings are retarded

Answer 4

Both of them has excellent sustained turning, but both of the are a little less economical in cruise than a conventional setup, but thats overcome by the huge displacement inside the delta wing, which allows for huge amounts of fuel to be stored.  

Answer 5

All other things being equal, an aircraft with pure delta wings (i.e. without canard) will have slightly lower aerodynamic performance than one with canard having the same mass, wing area and so on.

The reason is that, in order to be stable, the center of gravity of the plane has to be in front of the center of pressure, forcing the wing to have a natural balancing downward pitching moment which required a bit of downlift at the trailing edge of the wing. This force needs to be produced aerodynamically and will incur a certain degree of induced drag, moreover the wing has to provide a bit more lift at the center of pressure to account for this downforce, also with its incremental increase in induced drag. Note, for the record, that this balancing act also applies to most aircraft with a classic (i.e. tail in the back) configuration as well. However, the pure delta wing suffers a bit more than the classic configuration because the position of all control surfaces (elevons) are quite far from the center of gravity, and that rolling input (aileron deflection) will have a pitching component that needs to be balanced.

Now, if we move to an aircraft with canard, we notice that the force that makes the aircraft stable is located in front of the center of gravity, and is thus a positive lift. In other owrds, the canard contribution to lift is added to that of the wing, rather than being subtracted. The wing does not have to compensate for it and the overall lift margin of the wing is therefore greater, leading to improved aerodynamics characteristics.

So why aren't all aircraft canard? Because of the aerodynamic interaction with the wing, which has to work in the wake of the canard and will be influenced by its downwash. Some of those effects can be non linear and hard to control; active control however help to reduce the perception of instability and that is why we now see some high performance canard airplane recently.