Wind Tunnel/Aerodynamic Sim???

[starflyer]

Does anyone know of any kind of software that will allow me to design and build an aircraft and then test fly it, all in a cad/simulator piece of software. i.e. to design and build an aircraft in CAD and then test fly it in a sim to see if it would really fly?

Does such software exist?

Help please.

[Ollie]

With enough thrust to overcome drag at a speed that produces enough lift to overcome weight, a CG that produces stability and effective controls, ANYTHING (Lawnmowers, Witches on brooms) can be made to fly. In knife edge and hovering flight, the wings don't even have to produce any lift.

For gliders there is PC Soar, for electrics there is Moto Calc. There are also flight simulators that will accept your design input. I just can't recall the name of the flight simulator programs.

[Purdue Aero Man]

Ever hear of X-plane? It's not at all a 3D CAD package but will allow you to model your aircraft's qualities in an environment that does actual aerodynamic calculations. I believe they have a trial download that allows you to fly for 7 minutes before your joystick cuts out. I can't remember if the aircraft builder works without a full version though. At any rate, it's worth a look at.

[Zoom]

I have drawn a number of planes in CAD and then imported them into the FMS simulator. Here is a link to a plane I did a while back called the
Mako (http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76441) using this approach.

I actually use a number of other tools though such as Profili, Motocalc, weight and balance spreadsheets, spar strength calculators, etc. The flight sim is good for fine tuning the aesthetics of your plane and zeroing in on some of the more basic parameters like wing loading and power requirements.

There is a new version of FMS out now, which should be much better in this regard. I'll be giving it a try on my next project.

- Zoom -

[Viper2000]

www.x-plane.com

it's pretty good. But it's designed for full scale aviation. So to get it to give good answers you need to use dynamic scaling to bring the model up to full scale. You also need aerofoil data at the model reynolds number (if you're dynamically scaling, remember to scale the reynolds number so that the performance reads across). It's kinda like using a wind tunnel but backwards. The answers aren't bad, but X-plane suffers from GIGO in the extreme. Great if you know what you're doing though.

www.x-plane.org has some useful resources, forums, and thousands of aircraft you can d/l (mostly full scale)

Matt