Research on the pressure distribution under different airfoil types of aircraft

Abstract

Airfoils produce life force for aircraft, which is the reason for planes flying in the sky. The formation of the airfoil depends on its shape, so airfoil designs play an important role in airplane designs. The airfoil design is also prioritized in the process of aircraft design, its speed of creating affecting the progress of the entire project. The goal of airfoil’s design is not simply to create “good” wings, because it does not exist. This means that when airfoils are adapting to a certain airflow or flying condition, their performance might not be satisfied due to environmental variations. Therefore, the application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques and the Small Disturbance Equation, this study uses python to perform numerical analysis to simulate the surface pressure of the ideal wings under certain flying statues, and then applying a series of algorithms to calculate the shape of the target airfoils, which can find the most suitable airfoil shape under the flying circumstances. According to the researches, the best possible wings satisfying which the pressure below be as larger as possible than the pressure above to produce lift force, is f(x) = k*(x-1)∧4 for downside and f(x) = k*sin(pi(x-1)) for the top. Besides, after a series of calculations, this paper realized that the smaller the k value can be, the better fit it is to an ideal simulated airfoil shape.