Airfoil Simulator

[Brinda]

This page contains an interactive Java applet to explore the various factors which affect thelift of an airfoil. All of the information presented by the applet are available within theBeginner's Guide to Aerodynamics. You should start with the slide describing thefactors that affect lift.

This is a special, undergraduate, on-line version of theFoilSimJava applet. If you are an experienced FoilSimU user, you can use the sleekversionwhich does not contain the following instructions and loads faster onyour computer.

FoilSimU includes all of the options of the originalversion plus some additional input and output panels.These panels are made available so that you can study the details of theconformal mappingused in the Kutta-Joukowski analysis. In the analysis, flow around a cylinder is mapped intoflow around an airfoil. Using the Input choice boxon the control panel,you can display a generating plane input panel.The panel contains four input variables whichcontrol the size and location of the generating cylinderrelative to the poles of the transformation, and thestrength of the point vortexwhich is embedded in the airfoil.According to the Kutta condition of the analysis,the strength of the vortex isset to bring the aft stagnation point to the trailing edge.With this version of FoilSim, you can turn the Kutta conditionoff by using the analysis choice box on the control panel tostudy the effect. A graph of the flow in the generating cylinder plane isalso available using thePlot Selection option of theOutput choice box on the control panel.A technical paperdescribing the details of this method is alsoavailable.

There is an even more powerful version of FoilSimU which is available forvery experienced users. This program is a Java application, not an applet.It runs stand alone and you must have Java installed on your computer torun this program. The chief advantage of this program is that it can write output files to your computer. You can obtain a copy of this program bypushing the yellow button shown above.

* Compute and plot the Velocity Vector Plot of the flow past the selected body.

* Compute and plot the Pressure Distribution in terms of both Cp ( pressure coefficient ) and 1-Cp.

* Compute and plot the cL Vs alpha Curve of the selected body.

* Export the pressure distribution and the cL-Alpha data at various angles of attack as Ms.Excel file.

* Capture the images that are generated in the simulator (Profile and mesh details of the body, Vector plot, Cp distribution and cL - alpha Curve ) as .jpg files.

* Automatic name generation for exporting the data and capturing the images to avoid the confusions that are very common in any Scientific Computing.

* Total of 9 Arbitrary bodies coordinates files are included in the simulator as default. You can also generate your own coordinates file of any shape and associate with the simulator.

* Total of 1550 Airfoils coordinates files are provided with the simulator ( All are checked for compatibility so that the simulator can read without any problem ).

* One can view the pressure distribution for range of angles attack dynamically and interactively

* The Menu lists the available data files very dynamically. Even if the data files are added, removed or renamed when the simulator is open ( before running the simulation ), the simulator detects it and updates the list.

* Well Customization is made possible through the Options menu

* Extensive Help is also included for better utilization.

* All of these are kept in a attractive and user friendly Graphical User Interface.

I was interested in running an analysis on the NACA 23024 airfoil. I have built the geometry in CATIA V-5, with injection slot and suction slot (I have kept the slot size same). I generated the mesh in ICEM CFD. Now, I am feeling difficulties in running the analysis in ANSYS FLUENT.

The external domain would be the same setup as given in the template I suppose and the suction as well as the injection slot can be assigned to a separate boundary condition. I would try it as soon as I am at home and see if my colleagues find something out in the meantime

A good workaround would be to create the entire box including the domain while just having the actual aerofoil as a hole as you would also do in ansys. Do refer to the picture below of what I have done for a different aerofoil but concept is the same. This would likely negate all of the issues you are facing.

WaterLily is a simple and fast fluid simulator written in pure Julia. It solves the unsteady incompressible 2D or 3D Navier-Stokes equations on a Cartesian grid. The pressure Poisson equation is solved with a geometric multigrid method. Solid boundaries are modelled using the Boundary Data Immersion Method.

v1.0 has ported the solver from a serial CPU execution to a backend-agnostic execution including multi-threaded CPU and GPU from different vendors (NVIDIA and AMD tested so far) thanks to KernelAbstractions.jl. Compared to the previous serial version, we have benchmarked up to x182 speed-up on a GPU.

The most impressive fact is that the solver source code remains only around 800 LOC! We implement the @loop macro, which wraps @kernel from KernelAbstraction.jl and produces a kernel for an expression such as @loop over , where I is a CartesianIndex and R is a CartesianIndices range. And just by changing the array type of our Simulation struct from Array to CuArray or ROCArray, we can run in CPU, NVIDIA GPUs, or AMD GPUs, respectively.

Spherical shell sliced below the equator. Then pumped wider/shorter and narrower/longer to preserve the solid volume. All of this, and the resolution, is variable. Take a look at the code. The time step is automatically set by the CFL condition.

I am trying some flapping airfoil simulations in waterlily. I am having difficulty about how to get moments of flapping airfoils in waterlily to calculate power coefficients? Is there any possible solution? Thanks

Gliders, for instance, is something I could never understand why are done so poorly in X-Plane, even when their authors try their best to create them as close to the real thing as possible... Heck! they don't even "suffer" from the peculiarities of an egine / prop / turbofan...

Using a predictive FM is also tricky, as you know for sure only too well... It's twofold, since if everything is contained within what the FM does ok, then it's great, but sometimes just as with any other platform, aircraft creators have to fake the real data, use hidden surfaces, irrealistic geometries and/or airfoils, etc... to try to bring their models as close as possible to RW data.

This being said, it's still an excelent platform and well desgined models can offer their users a "sensation of being there" that is among the best I've used, sometimes on pair with DCS World and IL-2 Great Battles, comparable to AEFS and AEFS 2 ( I do not own AEFS 4 )...

If the gliders in X-Plane aren't accurate enough, then, unless I'm shown otherwise, I put that down to the author. Too many aircraft creators use some kind of default airfoil for all the airfoils on an aircraft. When I see videos like the one posted in here, it really shows that all the comments about X-Planes physics being dated are unfounded. And personally, I hope Austin doesn't change the physics model.

As with all add ons, what the developer puts into it is what the user gets out of it. I can make the default C172 fly with the speed of an aurora if I wanted to. I can make it fly higher than an SR71. To really nail the flight model, the developer needs to input as much accurate info as they can. Especially the airfoils. (Airfoil Maker).

My only gripe is that the ground looks very dark in Xplane 12. I believe the sun light is not being absorbed and bounced around which makes it comparatively darker ? Other than that everything looks pretty spot on.

Know anyone with a CV like that? - they dont even need to start from scratch, because all the default aircraft are modifyable out of the box and LR generally welcomes sharing upgrades with the community.

I've interacted this week with the author of a PIK-20 Standard Class glider. He's doing his best to create a plausible model for this glider, but also facing some limitations imposed by Plane Maker etc... You can check it at the .org... ( I'm "cagarini" there... )

Well... I really don't know what to say other than it puzzles me, but it's complex and involves various aspects of the "aerodynamics of gliders / soaring". Some details may be related to the way X-Plane's FM simplifies the modelling of the fuselage, or surface hidding. Others have to do with more tangible limitations in Plane-Maker like those related to the modelling of lift augmenttaion devices like "flaps" and their variants (no way to properly model their characteristics, such as when using negative flap settings, something I believe might get addressed along Xp12) ...

OTOH I find some aircraft superbly modeled. An example is a great free Spitfire Mk 1 you suggested sometime ago. I use it as one of my preferred ww2 taildraggers in XP12, and I compare it only to the DCS World Spitfire module... Even the default C172 feels just great! The helicopters I have used, although I never flew a real heli more than a couple minutes ( Hughes 300 and R44 ) make me think X-Plane does rotary wing at the level of the best modules for DCS World... Your sparky744 mSparks, has been fine tuned to a level that honestly makes it comparable to the Aerowinx PSX in some aspects when "hand flying" ( pitch-power couple not there yet though ? )...

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