Modern Airfoil Design

AIRFOIL DESIGN 3

Modern Airfoil Design

Flight has been the biggest desire since humanity had started. A lot of aircraft have been designed in the last two centuries. Sailplanes, helicopters and airplanes are just a few prototype. Moreover, aircraft have four forces of flight which are thrust, drag, weight and lift. Lift is the major force acting on an aircraft. Most aircrafts have airfoils which are a shape of wing used on an aircraft to produce lift. Basically, airfoils benefit from the differential pressure. When an aircraft moves forward, differential pressure occurs between the two faces of the airfoil which provide

The types of airfoil can be separated in three different ways including shape of wing, location of the wing and the angle between two wings. The airfoils which have angles different than 180 degrees are not used anymore on the cargo and passenger planes. Briefly area and shape are the two types of airfoils. For instance, the early warning and control aircraft Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet’s span area is 46.5 square meters while passenger aircraft Airbus A380’s span area is 846 square meters (Müller, 2004, p. 88; Taylor, 1996, p. 291) .The area of a wing cannot be selected randomly. The wing area which is the same as span is elected depending on a huge range of reviews which contain drag, stall speed, weight and fuel capacity (Kroo, 2005, “Area”). Lastly cruise conditions of aircraft determines the area of the airfoil. Cruise conditions of airfoil is based on usage of aircraft. For example, a small change in the area can cause bigger innovations in the cruise conditions. The aircraft aerodynamics, the fuselage structural design and the engine performance are affected by cruise behaviors, and optimum wing CL does not suit the aircraft (Kroo, 2005, “Area”). It is clear that using the convenient wing area for the type of aircraft is the one of the basic design steps. There are three basic types of airfoils which have different shape: semi-symmetrical airfoils, symmetrical airfoils, and flat bottom airfoils. The two types of airfoils

So taper ratio should choose an optimal value. Besides, the weight of airfoil is related to the cost of aircraft. The more cost of wing increases, the heavier aircraft wing is produced. In addition, wing expense should not be 10% more in the case of savings of .001% fuel (Kroo, 2005, “Span”). Thanks to a pleasant combination of taper ratio and cost of wing, the ideal weight airfoils are produced. The weight is the final stage of airfoil design.

In conclusion, thanks to their design airfoils can product lift. They are mostly designed as asymmetric because of the differential pressure. If a wing is designed more asymmetric, there is no need for extra angle of attack to produce more lift. Airfoils must be chosen according to purpose of aircraft. Passenger planes or cargo planes have considerably bigger wings than jets and they have mostly different aerodynamic characteristic. Determination of dimension of the wings is the first step of wing design. The other essential design step is deciding type of airfoil. Lastly the ideal wing weigh is calculated. So designing an airfoil depends on various significant stages which includes dimension, type and weight. If the three stages are determined efficiently, the best airfoil design for the chosen aircraft is