CAD Novice needs help with aerofoil profiles!

Thank you to all for the inputs – I have a solution now – so onwardsa and upwards on this project – thanks again forum!

FB

Profili – http://www.profili2.com/ – is perfect for playing with aerofoil profiles in a user-friendly kind of way. Plots are all very well, but you might wish to change thickness/chord, or even tweak leading / trailing edges, depending on what you are doing. I used Profilli for plotting the aerofoil that made up our loverly fabric Hurricane wings at Gransden. You’ll have to pay for the CAD format export for any 3D wing designs, but it is worth it. The database that comes with it – in the free version –contains a Clarke YH already.

If your software can import DXF files, you can alternatively get your Clarke YH from here: http://isoar.ca/~andrewm/rc/airfoils/13.html

Archer’s suggestion is the best source for raw plot data – only the link is http://www.ae.illinois.edu/m-selig/ads/coord_database.html#C

Clarke YH plots are here: http://www.ae.illinois.edu/m-selig/ads/coord/clarkyh.dat This dat file, if it won’t import directly into your package, can be modified in notepad to do so..

and gif here: http://www.ae.illinois.edu/m-selig/ads/afplots/clarkyh.gif

Beware.. if you happen to be doing a Hurricane, it’s a MODIFIED Clarke YH. I have the plots if you want them.

If you need any more tips, I’ve been there and hit a learning curve more akin to a climbing wall..

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=97236&page=2 post 46 for a snapshot what can be achieved with Profili..

Useful program

DesignFOIL is a useful program from http://www.dreesecode.com/

Even the demo version is quite powerful, and you can export coordinates to Excel. This can then be editted into script files that CAD programs can use.

I have compufoil 3D which can create airfoil shapes and export them as DXF files to use in things like autocad.

PM me and I’ll see what I can do.

Steve

No but when I was doing my Supermarine Spiteful wings I used a plot chart from the original drawings to lay out a grid and then it was a matter of joining up the dots using a bezier spline.
Worked perfectly!

Graham

It’s in this database: http://www.ae.illinois.edu/m-selig/ads/coord_database.html#C

This is the largest database for aerofoil data that I know of. Hope it helps, you may need to get the data into a different format but AFAIK they’re text files and thus easily modified. It might also be necessary to plot the points one by one into your CAD program, a bit of a struggle, but from there you can scale to whatever you need.

This any use?

http://www.worldofkrauss.com/foils

I’ve referred to it a few times looking up RAF aerofoil sections for reference but I’ve not tried to use the data in any sort of CAD package. I know it offers the aerofoil data in various formats though.