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Educational Resources

Here, you can access some materials useful in aircraft aerodynamic design—the materials we are collecting, producing, and using throughout our design and teaching efforts.

PPTs

Airfoil Design and Airfoil-Airframe Integration

This PPT explores the relationship between airfoil geometric and aerodynamic characteristics, as well as the approaches to airfoil design to ensure better aircraft performance. It also provides some historical and theoretical background related to airfoils. Why were the early airfoils so thin and cambered? How do we test a flying bird in a wind tunnel? Let's find out!

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This PPT explores aircraft drag decomposition, drag prediction, and various drag analytical models. It discusses drag reduction techniques and the physical mechanisms behind them.

Drag Reduction
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Propellers

This PPT discusses propeller configurations, geometry, and efficiency.  
Here, you will learn about the effect of diameter and number of blades on propeller efficiency; you will compare fans (ducted) propulsors to free propellers. Also, you will touch on the collection of propeller «P» effects, as well as the propeller–wing aerodynamic interaction. Finally, I mention distributed propulsion concept and briefly describe it.

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MATLAB codes

Airfoil XFOIL-based analysis

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This code uses XFOIL to predict the aerodynamic properties of the input airfoil.

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Input data:

  1. Airfoil X and Y coordinates in .dat format 

  2. Reynolds number

  3. Mach number

  4. Design lift coefficient

  5. Forced transition point

  6. Amplification factor

  7. Angle of attack range

 

Output data:

  1. Airfoil lift coefficient at zero angle of attack

  2. Airfoil lift slope

  3. Airfoil angle of attack at zero lift

  4. Airfoil maximum lift coefficient

  5. Airfoil critical angle of attack

  6. Airfoil aerodynamic center

  7. Airfoil maximum lift-to-drag ratio

  8. Angle of attack at the maximum lift-to-drag ratio

  9. Transition, laminar separation, turbulent transition points

  10. Lift, lift-to-drag ratio curves

  11. Drag polar 

Isolated propeller design and analysis using Momentum theory 

This script provides some fundamentals of the momentum theory and helps you design an isolated propeller based on the momentum theory.
The momentum theory is implemented in function  propeller_momentum_theory at the end of this script, which uses the required thrust and prop diameter to calculate the induced velocity, which in tern is used to calculate the thrust available from the propeller based on the flight speed.

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Input data:

  1. Aircraft flight speed 

  2. Number of propellers

  3. Aircraft weight

  4. Propeller diameter

 

Output data:

  1. Available thrust

  2. Required power

  3. Ideal efficiency

  4. Thrust/power

  5. Induced speed

Constraint analysis is used to assess the relative significance of performance constraints on the design. This is done by plotting the constraints on a special two-dimensional graph called the design space.

 

The code plots the required thrust ratio as a function of wing loading for various design cases. Also, it plots the required maximum lift coefficients for a series of stalling velocities as a function of the wing loading. Finally, it determines the optimum design point, that is, the combination of the wing loading and thrust loading that delivers the minimum wing and power plant weight. 

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The code uses a variety of input data describing the design conditions as well as the parameters of the atmosphere (which are modeled by the function  stdatmo). In this version of the code, the engine data is not normalized.  

Constraint Diagram for a Conventional Aircraft

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Solar UAV maximum allowable required power and battery energy balance

This code calculates the maximum power available from solar cells for a solar aircraft intended for a continuous day-night flight. Also, the code estimates if the given battery can be charged during the daytime so that the overnight flight is possible. This code uses the Martian solar parameters.

 

Input data:

  1. Required power extra to propulsion (e.g., for instruments), [W]

  2. Solar intensity distribution over a 24-hour cycle, [W/m^2] (Mars Climate Database v5.3: The Web Interface (jussieu.fr))

  3. Solar cell area, [m^2]

  4. Wing area, [m^2]

  5. Flight topographic data (latitude [deg], longitude [deg], areocentric longitude [deg], altitude [km]

  6. Efficiencies:   solar cells, dc/dc converter, propeller, gearbox, motor, motor control, mppt, battery, power switch

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Output data:

  1. Solar aircraft energy balance over a 24-hour cycle

  2. The maximum allowable required aircraft power

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Spreadsheets

Drone Performance Calculator

This is a useful code by Eugene Forsher, designed to estimate the flight performance of a drone based on battery and motor data. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xrjNFpPlQ3MG4Aru0L-JePGMl6F7P7lIdrCMV82YEBM/edit?usp=sharing

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Online Course "Introduction to Aircraft Aerodynamics"

How about a journey into applied aerodynamics?

Without applied aerodynamics, we would never be able to design airplanes and spaceships, racing cars, and bridges that can withstand powerful hurricanes.

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The flow through a windmill, storm prediction, the production of thrust by rocket engines, and the movement of air through air-conditioning systems are some other examples of applied aerodynamics.

Why does the Supermarine Spitfire have such a beautiful elliptical wing planform?

Are there any lift-friendly vortex patterns in nature?

How can the efficiency of airfoil-airframe integration be assessed?

Sea birds vs land birds aerodynamics?

A bird wind tunnel?

​We have developed this course to help anyone who wants to get started in applied aerodynamics, a complex and exciting science. All course materials are in English. In this course, we explain the relationship between the geometry of subsonic aircraft and their main aerodynamic characteristics. The course consists of two parts.

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In the first part of the course, we will study some of the pillars on which all aerodynamics is based.

We will consider the types of flow, including viscous flow, laminar, and turbulent boundary layers.  We will learn aerodynamic models useful in various applications. For example, the concept of circulation. Are those fluid elements really moving around an airfoil in circles?

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This material will prepare us for the second, applied part of the course. Its objective is to show how, using the tools of theoretical and applied aerodynamics, one can work on the geometry of a subsonic aircraft.

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We will start with airfoils and explore how airfoil shape and characteristics are related.

The next step will be to explore some general trends in the aerodynamic design of finite wings, high-lift devices, and tails. After that, we will touch on drag reduction techniques and propeller-airframe interaction.

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In the course, you will learn what numerical methods you can use to analyze the aerodynamics of your aircraft model and what their limitations are. You will familiarize yourself with both direct and inverse aerodynamic problems.

One of the lectures will be devoted to the aerodynamic experiment. You're probably wondering how scientists and engineers measure forces and moments on scale models, and what methods can be used to visualize those magical vortex patterns in a wind tunnel!

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The course includes interviews with specialists from the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute named after Professor N. E. Zhukovsky, a video about the MAI aerodynamic laboratory, and a video tour of the MAI aircraft hangar. These videos will help you better understand the real practical benefits of non-linear partial differential equations!

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Course materials are based on classic textbooks in aerodynamics and aircraft design, as well as recently published articles from scientific peer-reviewed journals.

In addition to video lectures with presentations, we included in the course the notes with a list of references, as well as equation, variable, and designation sheets. Hopefully, they will serve you well in your research, studies, and future engineering career.

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Who is this course for?

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This course is for you if you are interested in how the geometry of a light aircraft affects its performance. The material in this course assumes:

  • some knowledge of technical English,

  • familiarity with differential and integral calculus, vector analysis, and

  • the usual physics background.

 

What will this course give you?

With our course, you will begin to learn to:

  • apply the basic methods and theories of subsonic aerodynamics to solving problems;

  • understand the theoretical background and limitations of low-fidelity predictive methods used at early stages of the aircraft design process;

  • understand the criteria and methods for airfoil selection and design for general aviation aircraft;

  • understand the principles of design and optimization of the shape, size, and relative position of aircraft parts based on models and methods of theoretical aerodynamics.

 

If everything seems great to you, we will be happy to have you in our Introduction to Aircraft Aerodynamics!

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