Questions tagged [airfoil]
The 2D shape of a section of aircraft wing.
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Why is the critical AoA of most flaps 40° when most airfoils stall at 15°?
A plain flap deflected 40 degrees is largely stalled (...)
Flaps stall at 40° according to an answer on Quora, why is this so when typical airfoils stall at 15°?
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Do elevators have cambered airfoils inverted or symmetrical airfoils
Do horizontal stabilizer of ga planes e.g cessna 172(or ultralights e.g lazair) have cambered airfoils inverted to provide the tail downward force or do they have symmetrical airfoils at negative aoi ...
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Where can I get a graph of lift coefficient against AOA for a symmetrical airfoil?
Where can I get get a graph lift coefficient against AOA for a symmetrical airfoil ? I am asking for a source or link to a graph or table of AOA against Cl of any symmetrical airfoil.
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What is decalage and how it affects airplane performance?
What is decalage in airplanes and how important is it in respect to airplane performance?
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How to select the most efficient airfoil for low speed flight?
What airfoil (or family) has the highest $C_L/C_D$ ratio at speeds in the $50\:km/h$ range.
The use case would be an ultralight with a max speed of $50\:km/h$
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Is there a downwash equation?
I need to find an equation for the following problem: Suppose a full-size glider passes 10 feet over my head at high speed. No doubt I will feel the downward air pressure (downwash) caused by the ...
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Do negative angles-of-attack create lift?
(wikimedia.org) A typical curve showing section lift coefficient versus angle of attack for a cambered airfoil.
Based on the graph above, do negative angle-of-attack values create lift? How?
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How is shear stress distributed on an airfoil?
I know the pressure distribution on an airfoil but not shear stress. How is shear stress distributed on an airfoil?
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What is the "Centre of Pressure"?
This question may sound naive but surprisingly it puzzles me.
A wing has a centre of pressure, does it mean that lift acts on point and not on the whole chord of an airfoil?
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How to pick a good airfoil based on Cl and Cd
Let's assume I have 10 different airfoils graphs of Cl x Aoa, Cd x Aoa and Cl/Cd x Aoa. How do I pick the best one that will give me the most efficiency (the longest flight time)?
I understand the ...
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How do we determine whether the airfoil trailing edge should be cusped or pointed?
I'm working on a project and I need to decide whether an airfoil has a cusped or pointed trailing edge given the x and y coordinates of the airfoil.
What is the difference between the two trailing ...
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Do wingtip vortices cause a decrease in the lift component of aerodynamic force, and do planes need to pull more AoA to compensate?
So, from what I know about wingtip vortices, they shift the angle of the relative airflow to where the effective angle of attack of the airfoil is lowered. Since the aerodynamic force is always ...
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In what way are the airfoils used for a propeller different from the ones used in turbofan engine?
Airfoils are used in the blades of a propeller as well as the blades of the fan, axial compressor and turbine in a turbofan engine. Thus, the airfoils used in above two applications have different ...
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What are the effects of rotating airfoil sections to match wing's dihedral?
While designing a wing, what are the advantages and disadvantages of rotating the airfoil sections to match a linear dihedral (airfoil sections always perpendicular to the dihedral line)? Does the ...
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What would be the effect of skinning over the gap in fixed leading-edge slats?
The Zenith STOL CH-750 experimental aircraft uses a modified NACA 650-18 airfoil (having a 17% fatter-than-normal thickness) with a fixed leading-edge slat. In an effort to reduce drag and improve ...
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What are the effects of camber location in an airfoil?
Am I correct to assume that for a low speed aircraft, the location of the camber in the MAC's airfoil will correspond with the aerodynamic center? Also, does that affect the moment coefficient? And ...
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What are the equations of motions for parafoils?
I want to use the following equations so as to describe the motion of parafoil
$$\left[ {\begin{array}{*{20}{c}}{\dot x}\\{\dot y}\\{\dot z}\end{array}} \right] = {V_a}\left[ {\begin{array}{*{20}{c}}{\...
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What is the mathematical relation between CLmax and Reynolds number?
I know that Reynolds number influences CLmax, but I am not able to find any formula with which I could plot a graph!
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Can I compute the lift coefficient based on the NACA airfoil?
I would like to know whether it is possible to compute the lift coefficient $C_l$ based on the NACA airfoil? Usually I look up the values on airfoiltools.com.
Eg: If I have a 2412NACA airfoil and ...
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How do I choose the correct airfoil?
I am currently working on a personal single seat, piston aircraft that I would fly myself and I am currently in a bit of conundrum when it comes to my wing design. In this project, I assigned us in 2 ...
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How are empennage airfoils chosen?
Empennage airfoils are usually symmetric. What is the process behind choosing the airfoil used in the tail of the airplane? Is it related to the stability? And then how would the angle of attack of ...
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What are the conditions for an airfoil to be a "thin airfoil?"
I know about the theory differences between regular airfoils and thin airfoils, but is there any condition for saying a given airfoil can be analyzed as if it is thin? The extreme case of infinitely ...
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How does the airfoil pitching moment relate to center of pressure?
I've looked everywhere to find the answer and it's still unclear to me.
How does pitching moment relate to center of pressure? Does it relate to coefficient of lift?
I have made a carbon fiber wing ...
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How can I calculate the angle of attack of an airfoil? [closed]
Can someone provide me a general algorithm to compute the angle of attack of an airfoil, and some theory along with it?
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What is the physical meaning of circulation found in Kutta condition?
The Kutta–Joukowski theorem is applicable for 2D lift calculation as soon as the Kutta condition is verified. When this is the case, there is a circulation $\small \Gamma$ around the airfoil. My ...
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How to find coordinates of the geometric center of a NACA 4-digit airfoil?
For a project that my team and I are working on, we are using Autodesk Inventor Professional 2018 (student license) for 3D modelling. We are working on NACA airfoils.
I need to create an airfoil ...
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Documentation about "drag stabilized flying wings using non-reflex airfoils"?
What provides lift is the wing, but it is unstable without one stabilizer.
Flying wings airfoils, or reflex airfoils, carry their stabilizer inside them, through a reversed camber of the trailing ...
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Is inverted flight possible under these conditions? [duplicate]
My understanding of flight is that the primary aspect is the angle of deflection, and the purposes of the shape of the wing is to maximise efficiency. Could a commercial airliner with asymmetric ...
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Which are some planes shaped like an inverted wing?
To understand my question better, let's consider the priciple behind the lift generated by the wing - The upper surface of the air-foil is curved to deflect the air downwards using the Coanda effect. ...
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What airfoil design does the MQ-9 Reaper UAV use?
What airfoil design does the MQ-9 Reaper UAV use? Alternatively, what similar airfoil designs exist?
I'm running simulations for the effects of vortex generators for a school project and I would ...
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What is the airfoil used in the SB13 flying wing?
(Source)
What airfoil is used for the wing of this aircraft?
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Drag coefficient and lift coefficient [closed]
What happens if drag coefficient increases but the lift coefficient remain the same?
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What happens when the velocity of the lower surface of the airfoil is lower than the velocity of the free stream?
At a certain AOA I noticed that the speed of air in the lower surface of the airfoil is lower than the free stream's speed. What is the consequence of that?
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How can I calculate stall speed using foilsim?
I need to find the stall speed of an airfoil using foilsim not the formula (https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/foil3.html)
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Is flow turning different from the Magnus Effect? If so, how?
The production of lift is much more complex than a simple
differential pressure between upper and lower airfoil surfaces. In
fact, many lifting airfoils do not have an upper surface longer than
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How does the thickness of a wing affect its aspect ratio?
As far as I understand, the aspect ratio equals the wingspan divided by the chord or the square of the wingspan divided by the wing area. Given this formula factoring in only the wingspan, the chord, ...
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Can this design provide more lift force than thrust from engine?
The problem is depicted in the picture:
Generally, why we don't use engine blow wings to fly? Can we use wind-tunnel-like wing to generate lift force?
Can it generate more lift than thrust? If it ...
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What are the disadvantages (if any) of using a supercritical airfoil?
The title sums up my question pretty well.
I've searched all over this site, having read many of the questions and answers to various supercritical wing topics, but I haven't found any mention of ...
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How to design the blade twist angle in propeller design?
I am designing a scale propeller for small UAVs and I have computed blade twist distribution for the blade airfoil sections. While I was modelling the propeller I have set the angles to twist about ...
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Can a transonic airfoil have two shock waves?
I am currently running CFD cases on a transonic airfoil at Mach 0.75 and performing an angle-of-attack sweep to evaluate its performance. When I reached the angle of attack of 4.5 degrees (which I ...
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What is the effect of flow separation on lift, pressure distribution and drag?
Consider an airfoil (a wing) in an airflow. When angle of attack increases, at some point the flow start to separate from trailing edge. By increasing the angle of attack more, this separation area ...
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Determination of a Joukowski airfoil chord (demonstration)
I'm currently studying Aerodynamics, and one thing that I noticed is that the maximum and minimum $x$ coordinate of the airfoils (which are necessary to compute the chord) on the transformed plane (...
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How to locate the coordinates of the Center of Gravity of an airfoil?
I am working on the inertial effects on a variable pitch propeller and i need to define the location of the center of gravity on the airfoil to calculate moments of Inertia and angular momentum. What ...
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What is the pressure on the pressure side in relation to the freestream?
The following [edited] images are from a network post:
The top image states on the pressure side, the pressure is greater than the freestream.
On the bottom image, the $C_p$ varies.
According to ...
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Why use different airfoils on the same wing of an aircraft?
Why different airfoils are used in different portions of the same wing of an aircraft, for example Boeing 737 wing?
Boeing Commercial Airplane Company model 737 airfoils' dat files from here:
http://...
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How to calculate the drag on an airfoil from momentum equation (Fundamental of Aerodynamics 5th edition, J.D.Anderson)?
If you got the book, please read 2.6 section (page 135). Here is my sumary of this section:
An airfoil in a wind tunnel (wingtips were butted against both sidewalls of wind tunnel). The control ...
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How to calculate variable pitch propeller parameters?
I'm carrying out a project on Variable Pitch Propellers for UAVs and especially self-adjusting or Passive Variable Pitch Propellers that change pitch due to aerodynamic forces and Pitching Moments.
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What is the meaning of the percentage used to describe the thinness of this glider's airfoil?
In a glider review for the Schempp-Hirth Discus, I encountered the following paragraph:
The Discus 2 airfoil is thin (about 14.5 percent), incorporating studies by K.H. Horstmann and Dr. Wuerz (...
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Was the B727's wing supercritical (even if not so designed)?
The Boeing 727's wing upper surface appears unusually flat, especially at the root (Albeit at an angle). Refer to the images linked below:
airlinereporter.com
Flickr
Also from Flickr
Was the B727'...
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Why the dynamic pressure is not mentioned in the explanation of lift by Bernoulli's principle?
Usual "explanation" of lift using Bernoulli principle
This theory is:
Air over the wing is accelerated, its dynamic pressure increases with velocity.
The static pressure over the wing decreases (due ...
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