airfoil simulator

[Lynn Baker]

This section does not get much attention anymore. Thats a shame, there were a lot of interesting discussion here in the past.

Anyway, there is an interesting freebie airfoil simulator at this NASA web site

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/foil2.html

It is a Java applet that you can run on the web or download. The associated web pages have some good discussions about airfoils. Informative without being too technical. I have enjoyed playing with the simulator by guesstimating some of the wings on my electrics. It seems to give rather realistic results.

Lynn

[peter_jensen]

Unfortunately it's often a bit technical, but you should check out the xfoil yahoogroup for continuing discussion of airfoil simulation at a semi-modeling level.

-Peter

[orectolobus]

For a easy to use program for displaying airfoil data,
making alterations and then outputting to DXF for
import into design programs check out the
Airfoil Designer Workshop.

More Information (http://www.tdmsoftware.com/afd)

http://www.tdmsoftware.com/afd/afd1.jpg

[BMatthews]

That applet is a GREAT teaching aid. I've pointed it out in other threads before.

It's a great way to get a feel for how area, weight, speed, camber and angle of attack all come together to affect the Reynolds number, lift coefficient and zero lift angles.

But it's not really effective for choosing an airfoil for the next model. For that I feel we need things like Xfoil and a deeper understanding on how to read the charts it produces.