VMA - Foil Design and Analysis

Foils are very important elements for the design of marine vessels as well as aircraft. To design a successful rudder, keel for a sailing yacht, rotating wing mast, daggerboard for a multihull, active stabilization wing for a naval ship, hydrofoil lifting device for a fast experimental craft, a propeller for a submarine or wing sails -thanks for the caution Mladen :)- to thrust a surface vessel... you have to work with foils. The software below can help you significantly. But for more complex analyses, you will need high-end CFD codes. UIUC Airfoil Coordinates Database - Version 2.0 (over 1550 airfoils)

listed in alphabetical order!

Airfoil Analysis	Airfoil Analysis is a professional-level airfoil analysis system package. It is developed for use by anyone who needs fast, accurate wing airfoil analysis. Airfoil Analysis package is constituted by 5 modules: Geometric Module, Potential Flow Module, Viscous Flow Module, Structural Module, Modeller Module. Project is under development and seems it will be the most complete foil package in the Windows environment.

Airfoil Optimizer	Airfoil Optimizer is a tool for selecting a near optimum airfoil for your aircraft design and can assist you in selecting an appropriate airfoil for your aircraft design and includes 4 primary screens or worksheets.

DesignFoil	Designfoil is airfoil design and analysis software for general aviation airfoil aerodynamics and wing performance predictions. The software has been tailored for the engineering and industrial design market, but is still easy enough for the individual designer and kit airplane builder to use. The software modules feature a straight forward interaction for fast and accurate information and predictions.

Foil97	Foil97 is a design and analysis program for 2D Air and Hydro Foils. The analysis portion of program is based on code first developed by R. Eppler of NASA. The program uses NURB curve shape definition. Foil97 computes reynolds numbers based on water or air usage, chord length and a range of velocities. Each run by Foil97 computes 13 angles of attack and 5 reynolds numbers and displays lift and drag, lift to drag ratio, onset of turbulence and flow separation and the occurrence of bubbles. Laminar flow is easily observed.

Linairpro	Linairpro offers flexible specification of the geometry and flow conditions. Asymmetric flow conditions (e.g. sideslip) are also permitted along with rotation rates (pitch, roll, and yaw). Thus, the program can be used to construct a complete set of (quasi-steady) stability derivatives for the aircraft. Forces are computed using "near-field" velocities, a method that is somewhat more time-consuming than the Trefftz plane analysis but which properly accounts for distributions of chordwise forces and nonlinear local interference effects such as might be encountered with a close - coupled canard.

MicroTunnel	MicroTunnel analyzes 2-D subsonic, transonic, and supersonic aerodynamic flow (Mach 0.1 to 10) over multi-element configurations on an 800x600 Cartesian cut-cell mesh. Flow visualization is provided through color contour plots of local Mach number, density, pressure, and temperature, including streamline plots. Shock waves are easily captured! MicroTunnel is an excellent educational tool for anyone studying aerodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, gas dynamics, or compressible flow.

Panda	This program computes and graphically displays the pressure distribution on airfoil sections in subsonic flow. For a particular airfoil with coordinates, the program calculates the inviscid pressure distribution over the airfoil at a specified angle of attack and Mach number; lift and pitching moment about the 1/4 chord point are also computed. The analysis is done with remarkable speed so that the effects of changes in angle of attack or airfoil geometry can be studied easily. The location of transition, laminar or turbulent separation, and total drag are computed based on integral boundary layer methods.

Sailing Aerodynamics	SailingAerodynamics is a unique tool for designing and optimizing the foil component of high performance sailboat keels and rudders. It is an intuitive 3-D aerodynamics software package that computes lift (side force), drag, moments and sizes sailboat appendages based on their predicted performance. The program creates comparison graphs that gives you the ability to evaluate several designs in minutes. It has a built-in library with thousands of airfoils many of which are suitable for high performance appendages.

Visualfoil	A powerful and easy-to-use 2D software package for testing and designing airfoil sections. Analyze over 1000 built-in airfoils; generate multiple polar graphs; generate streamlines and pressure contour graphs; generate O-Grids; generate airfoil .dxf files; Plot airfoils templates. VisualFoil generates the lift, drag, moments, center of pressure, angle for zero lift, maximum lift, angle for maximum lift and other critical aerodynamics information for any airfoil.

Wings32	Wings is a powerful keel and rudder design tool that is capable of creating virtually any shape keel or rudder and capable of creating bulbed keels with integral struts. Any keel or rudder may be comprised of two foils, one at the root and one at the tip and then uniformly blended such that the foil section at the middle of the keel or rudder span is made up of 50% of the root shape and 50% of the tip shape. Wings provides a NURB spline curve that is used to define the outer edge of the keel or rudder. The edge maybe made up of curves or sharp breaks as desired.

XFLR5	XFLR5 is an adaptation of Drela’s and Youngren’s original XFoil , designed to support a Windows type interface, and ported to C++ language for greater flexibility. XFLR5 supports the "Analysis" features directly derived from XFoil. It is Free!

XFoil	XFoil is an interactive program for the design and analysis of subsonic isolated airfoils. It consists of a collection of menu-driven routines which perform various useful functions for viscous (or inviscid) analysis of an existing airfoil. XFoil is released under the GNU General Public License.