Free Airfoil Design Software

[Aviator]

Thanks a million fly2

 

[ED_Team]

Hi guys,
if you're interested in wing sections design
you might want to know about this:
www.evolutiondesigns.eu
Best regards

 

[philipabraham]

Its really a nice one.thanks for sharing.

 

[Dana]

Hi guys,
if you're interested in wing sections design
you might want to know about this:
www.evolutiondesigns.eu
Best regards

Nothing on the website about what it costs if anything, whether the download is a demo or full version... needs more information.

-Dana

When one fails to recognize Reality. it rarely returns the favor.

 

[Jan Carlsson]

the evolution seems to be based on xfoil, so ... free

 

[Jetair]

Hi Philip,
Am trying to find the website for the free Airfoil design program, can you please let me know? Thanks in advance.

Alan Thorn UK

 

[PaulS]

Jetair, what operating system are you running?
If you are running Linux go here:
Manticore Aerofoil Design | Free Science & Engineering software downloads at SourceForge.net
You have to compile and install it but the instructions are very detailed.
If you are running Windows... that one won't work and I have never found a good program for the PC that is open source or even freeware or shareware.
If you find one for windows then let us all know.

 

[Norman]

There's a new airfoil design program in development called "XoptFoil". It uses a particle swarm algorithm to search for the optimum geometry based on the goals and constraints that you supply. This is a very computational intensive proses so it can tie up a multi-core machine for hours trying to find just the right airfoil section for your wing. Looks like it's only available as source code right now so you'll have to compile it yourself.

 

[SpainCub]

Thanks Norman,

Anyone here tried it yet? I am getting errors compiling it on my Maverick OSX but it could be an issue with my compiler setup...
Also anyone tried the evolutions SW? How is that working?

 

[SpainCub]

This is also interesting on optimising airfoils...

Gradient-based aero-structural optimisation of an airfoil:

The optimisation maximises L/D at multiple operational points subject to constraints on structural stiffness parameters EI_x, EI_y, EI_p.

Participating solvers: XFOIL, BECAS (http://www.becas.dtu.dk,)
Optimization framework: OpenMDAO (http://openmdao.org) using the PSQP optimiser available in PyOpt (http://pyopt.org).

Also interesting...

 

[Armilite]

You are correct they don't. However, I suppose it could be argued that there are currently a number of good airfoils to use and there are independent researchers. You can see some of them in the list here: The Incomplete Guide to Airfoil Usage

One article I recall from about 30 years ago was in EAA's magazine: http://www.eaa.org/experimenter/articles/0909_archives.pdf
Dan Somers is now here: Airfoil design and aerodynamics by Airfoils, Inc
You can see this same airfoil {NLF(1)-0215F} designed by Dan Somers referenced in the chart here: Airfoil Selection

Harry Riblett's airfoils have been discussed on this forum before. You can see a book he authored on GA airfoils here: Design Books from Aircraft Spruce

There is another book on airfoils with articles from Barnaby Wainfan. Also on the second page there is a comprehensive book on airfoil sections.

David Lednicer (who worked for John Roncz) had some skepticism about Riblett back in 1988: Riblett airfoils (Walter Lounsbery, David Lednicer, "highflyer")
However, Riblett has also been discussed here on this forum.

What I've generally heard is that these types of airfoils pretty much do the job.

========================================================================================================
That first link you gave, listed the CGS Hawk Airfoil as, Univ Illinois UI-1720 How do I find the data on that, I would like to compare that to my T-Bird I.

Rich

 

[Norman]

That first link you gave, listed the CGS Hawk Airfoil as, Univ Illinois UI-1720 How do I find the data on that, I would like to compare that to my T-Bird I.

Rich

It's in the UIUC database and several others. Google works very well for finding airfoil data if you have the exact spelling of the designation

 

[Norman]

There's a new airfoil design program in development called "XoptFoil". It uses a particle swarm algorithm to search for the optimum geometry based on the goals and constraints that you supply. This is a very computational intensive proses so it can tie up a multi-core machine for hours trying to find just the right airfoil section for your wing. Looks like it's only available as source code right now so you'll have to compile it yourself.

I'm bumping this zombie thread because there are several programs mentioned and Daniel has just released version 1.10.0 of XoptFoil

 

[fly2kads]

I'm bumping this zombie thread because there are several programs mentioned and Daniel has just released version 1.10.0 of XoptFoil

I tried XoptFoil for the first time a couple of months ago, and was very happy with the results. No magic there, but it sure sped up what I was trying to accomplish with plain ol' XFoil. I'll check out the new version!