AIRFOIL DESIGN

Abstract

"Airfoil is the main part of the airplane which contributes the lift required by the airplane to fly in the air. People who are interested in RC plane flying usually buy the Ready-to-Fly models and assemble them. Another way is buy the Almost-Ready-to-Fly models and spend a bit more time assembling them. Both this ways have a commonality, they have the fixed airfoil design and wing areas. Currently there are very little manufacturers and sellers which sell customized RC plane. So if the people who are interested in build a model airplane from scratch will need to use the trial and error method to test the airfoil is safe for flying or not. By varying the wing’s area and the angle of attack, different lift can be created and can be used to fly the airplane. This project will help the people who are interested in build model RC airplanes from scratch by computing the wing’s area and dimensions required for the airplane to takeoff and fly. It will help them to save a lot of time on computing the equations and on the trial and error method. The program can also be use as basic tool to show the users what will happen when some variables like the weight of the plane, the AOA of the wings and the speed of the aircraft are changed and how it will affect the results and lift generated. The thin airfoil theory will be use as the calculation portion for the variables, however the theory does not predict the drag generated and other methods will have to be use to calculate drag. As the program is design for RC model airplanes, drag will be assume to be negligible. The airfoil shape will be generated base on the NACA 4 series formulas. The results obtained from the program are within 20% of the actual data. This demonstrates that the thin airfoil theory is quite effective in predicting the important parameters which are use for airfoil design. However it is unable to predict drag and other methods need to be used if there is a need which is not included in this project. "