WASP-0.13

[Mark Rostron]

uploading a copy of an aircraft design - apologies for cheesy name
i have 2 problems:
- cant find the way to center the hinge on the front canard (currently on the leading edge)
- i want to taper the rear/base of the fuselage - difficult to do with the fuselage geom tool because the smoothing it creates a bulge; i have been experimenting with custom profiles using the "edit curve" feature - is this the way to do it? (i.e. add more sub-sections with gradually smaller profiles ... ?)

thanks v much for your time on this, mr

[Zach Hazen]

- canard subsurface L/C set to 0.5 (was 1.0, leading edge)
- fuselage width XSEC3 made more narrow, and skinning on 2/3 edited to create a smooth taper

Hope that helps!

[Mark Rostron]

Thanks v much for response Zach
i am attaching updated vsp3 model
i am running version OpenVSP-3.48.2-MacOS
i am getting a segment fault when running vspaero
path taken is vsp->analysis->aero->VSPAERO->ViewerConsole->LaunchSolver
machine is macbook (2015 13" intel 11.7.11)
i am still training on usage of this tk, but not sure if i should have included more info
i understand the machine could simply be too old or too small for this job ... 

text of the crash dump output (top ~50 lines):

Process:               vsp [46764]
Path:                  /Users/USER/Downloads/*/vsp
Identifier:            vsp
Version:               0
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        bash [46758]
Responsible:           Terminal [46756]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2026-07-29 19:40:10.402 +1000
OS Version:            macOS 11.7.11 (20G1443)
Report Version:        12
Anonymous UUID:        CC540E19-2B35-155F-3776-054D89024AD6

Sleep/Wake UUID:       ACC04842-6F22-4B94-820F-BAB6AF0EBE81

Time Awake Since Boot: 1000000 seconds
Time Since Wake:       19000 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread:        0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes:       KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal:    Segmentation fault: 11
Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0xb
Terminating Process:   exc handler [46764]

VM Regions Near 0:
-->
    __TEXT                      105ee0000-107ee4000    [ 32.0M] r-x/r-x SM=COW  /Users/*/Downloads/*

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   vsp                           0x0000000106278c18 BuildTMeshTris(TMesh*, bool, double, int, int, int&) + 1144
1   vsp                           0x00000001062799fd CreateTMeshVecFromPts(Geom const*, std::__1::vector<TMesh*, std::__1::allocator<TMesh*> >&, std::__1::vector<std::__1::vector<vec3d, std::__1::allocator<vec3d> >, std::__1::allocator<std::__1::vector<vec3d, std::__1::allocator<vec3d> > > > const&, std::__1::vector<std::__1::vector<vec3d, std::__1::allocator<vec3d> >, std::__1::allocator<std::__1::vector<vec3d, std::__1::allocator<vec3d> > > > const&, int, int, int, int, int, bool, bool, bool, int, int, int&, bool) + 765

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[Rob McDonald]

I'll have to track down the root of the bug, but there are several best practices that you could follow that would prevent you from running into it at all.

You are using the 'Shown' Set with VSPAERO.  While this is very quick, convenient, and easy -- it is not the way to go for any serious work.

Instead, you should establish a Set to use for thin surface components and another for thick surface components.

Next, there is no reason for the items inside the aircraft to be in the Set passed to VSPAERO.  I.e. the pilot, fuel cells, systems, etc.

The root of the bug appears to be OpenVSP processing the custom components (fuel and systems) into thin-surface representations.  They shouldn't even be involved, so removing them works around this bug.

Your fuselage is not self watertight.  Both the nose and tail end are open.  You will want to close them.

While you can work with thin surfaces all around, VSPAERO works with mixed thick and thin surfaces.  For this system, I would use Thick for the Fuselage and Thin for all the lifting surfaces.

Your wing spanwise resolution is not sufficient to get a result you will be happy with.

Your winglet and wing TE are perfectly aligned.  This really shouldn't be a problem, but it is causing OpenVSP to detect the winglet wake tracing onto the wing wake -- and then the wing wake is incomplete.  I will have to look into this, but the easy workaround is probably to just make the winglet chord slightly shorter so the TE's don't perfectly align.

Rob

[Mark Rostron]

apologies - the thick items are set_0 and thin are set_1 - i mixed up the previous email - mr

On Tue, Aug 4, 2026 at 1:34 PM Mark Rostron <rostro...@gmail.com> wrote:

thanks Rob
attaching my latest .vsp3

vspaero now working - i allocated the fuselage and internal geoms to the set_1 (thick) and wing/canard/fin/fence to set_0 (thin), and then set the thick/thin parameters to these sets - this fixed the segfault - thank you

question: i want to use roncz airfoils for the wing and canard, however, other than the "alias" parameter in the vsp ui section editor, it looks like i need to use the custom curve editor in the "section" ui - am i reading this correctly? attaching vspaero viewer at 10deg aoa, am expecting a bit more turbulence when i add airfoil to the solver



mr

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/openvsp/63fd1ee5-53d7-4083-b151-4ed89ae75f56n%40googlegroups.com.

[Mark Rostron]

thanks Rob
attaching my latest .vsp3

vspaero now working - i allocated the fuselage and internal geoms to the set_1 (thick) and wing/canard/fin/fence to set_0 (thin), and then set the thick/thin parameters to these sets - this fixed the segfault - thank you

question: i want to use roncz airfoils for the wing and canard, however, other than the "alias" parameter in the vsp ui section editor, it looks like i need to use the custom curve editor in the "section" ui - am i reading this correctly? attaching vspaero viewer at 10deg aoa, am expecting a bit more turbulence when i add airfoil to the solver



mr

On Thu, Jul 30, 2026 at 12:21 AM Rob McDonald <rob.a.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/openvsp/63fd1ee5-53d7-4083-b151-4ed89ae75f56n%40googlegroups.com.

[Rob McDonald]

You should use a File type Airfoil when you have a specific non-parametric airfoil for a model.

Rob