A cohesive tool for analyzing & comparing airfoils
A tool linked with XFoil which presents an analysis of airfoils, along with a feature for co-plotting various airfoils for a comprehensive analysis.
Source code coming soon
The creation of the airfoil analysis tool originates from my first Aerodynamics Lab class. In this class, we conducted experiments of various airfoils to compare their aerodynamic properties. Before experimentation, we used a numerical method to calculate their properties to compare them with our experimental results. Thus, I wanted to create a tool that would do an easy numerical analysis of an airfoil with little to no knowledge of how to use XFoil.
A major mission of the project was to link XFoil into MATLAB so that everything could be exclusively pre-written. While XFoil is an interactive program, scripts can be written in advance and executed in the program significantly faster.
The tool allows a user to select all necessary parameters in one step. Unlike XFoil, the script gives explanations for each setting to help a user select the most relevant parameters applicable.
This part is currently a work in progress. I postponed this project to push my website development further and expedite its release.
The next part of the project was creating a graphical display of the airfoil’s properties. In MATLAB, this is quickly achievable with the figure() function. Many custom inputs for styling the graph are presented in the screenshot below. On occasion, airfoils can have values of zero for certain aerodynamic properties, so I added a text output and visual marker for any x-intercepts present in the graphs.
Currently, only one singular graph can be co-plotted with any two axes. However, in the future, I would like to create an automatic GUI display that has all aerodynamic properties displayed together. This way, it is far more convenient to see how airfoils compare across all properties.
I am also working on the Coefficient of Pressure, which will an additional convenient feature to include in the tool.
In the future, I intend on creating an interactive GUI for the tool. When organized in an appropriate way, it will be intuitively arranged so that it is easy to use with relatively little knowledge of airfoil theory.
As mentioned earlier, a few additional items on my “todo” list for this script is Coefficient of Pressure and XFoil+MATLAB Linking.
Quick Note: Coefficient of Pressure is solved with numerical integration, and can be done in either MATLAB or XFoil. I will need to conduct experiments to see which program performs this calculation quicker. I would not be surprised if MATLAB performs better, since it was designed to handle these types of calculations.
