Statistical Analysis of Airfoil Usage in Aircraft

Year 2024, , 214 - 220, 22.10.2024

Seyhun Durmuş

https://doi.org/10.30518/jav.1493359

Abstract

The study aims to answer how frequently airfoils are used in fixed and rotary wing aerial vehicles produced both individually and based on airfoil families. Frequency distribution analysis of airfoil utilization in fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft helps in understanding design preferences and performance needs and constraints. The literature study provides the history of airfoils, the subjects mostly studied regarding airfoils and mentions the current state of the field. The study investigates the airfoil families to which the wing profiles of approximately 6,000 fixed-wing and approximately 450 rotary-wing aircraft belong through frequency distribution. The results indicate that in fixed-wing aircraft, NACA airfoils are used in 52.2%, Clark-Y airfoils in 8.2%, Goettingen airfoils in 5.9%, Wortman airfoils in 4.8%, and TsAGI airfoils in 3.1%. When considered as singular airfoil use rather than airfoil families, Clark-Y is the most widely used airfoil, followed by the NACA 23XXX series. In rotary-wing aircraft, NACA 0012 and NACA 0015 airfoils, both symmetrical profiles developed by NACA, are the most widely used. The study is valuable as it provides statistical data on the use of both airfoil families and singular airfoil design in fixed and rotary-wing aircraft. However, it is important to note that the airfoil data is incomplete, and the study aims to provide a general impression of the findings.

Keywords

Airfoil usage, airfoil design, NACA airfoils, Wortmann FX airfoils, Goettingen airfoils

References

• Allen, B. (2017). NACA Airfoils. NASA.
• Anderson, J. (2011). Fundamentals of Aerodynamics (SI units). McGraw hill.
• Aşan, Ö. F., Güler, E., Aksoy, M. M., Pınar, E., et al. (2023). Numerical Investigation of Flow Structure around NACA 0018 with slot. Osmaniye Korkut Ata University Journal of the Institute of Science and Technology, 6(Ek Sayı), 152-167.
• Burington, R. S. (1940). On the use of conformal mapping in shaping wing profiles. The American Mathematical Monthly, 47(6), 362-373.
• Collazo Garcia, A. R., & Ansell, P. J. (2023). Design of Laminar-Flow Airfoils Based On Boundary-Layer Integral Parameters. In AIAA SCITECH 2023 Forum (p. 2608).
• Dwyer, L. (2013). The aviation history online museum.
• Gaster, M. (1967). The structure and behaviour of laminar separation bubbles. NPL.
• Gudmundsson, S. (2013). General aviation aircraft design: Applied Methods and Procedures. Butterworth- Heinemann.
• Glaws, A., King, R. N., Vijayakumar, G., & Ananthan, S. (2022). Invertible neural networks for airfoil design. AIAA journal, 60(5), 3035-3047.
• Greydanus, S. (2020). The Story of Airplane Wings. arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.07446.
• Harris, C. D. (1990). NASA Supercritical.
• Jahangirian, A. R., & Ebrahimi, M. (2017). Airfoil shape optimization with adaptive mutation genetic algorithm. Journal of Aerospace Science and Technology, 11(1).
• Krishna, M., Thanigaivelan, V., & Joshua, A. (2021, April). Analysis of various NACA airfoil and fabrication of wind tunnel to test the scaled-down model of an airfoil. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 1130, No. 1, p. 012021). Iop Publishing.
• Milne-Thomson, L. M. (1973). Theoretical aerodynamics. Courier Corporation.
• Parlett, L. P. (1971). Wind-Tunnel Investigation of an External-Flow Jet-Flap Transport Configuration Having Full-Span Triple-Slotted Flaps. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
• Patel, Y., Ansell, P. J., Lim, J. W., Barr, S. M., Weathers, T., Alexanderoni, S., ... & Abramov, D. (2023). Airfoil Design for Rotors in the Low Reynolds Number Regime. In AIAA AVIATION 2023 Forum (p. 3244).
• Quagliarella, D., & Vicini, A. (2001). Viscous single and multicomponent airfoil design with genetic algorithms. Finite Elements in Analysis and Design, 37(5), 365-380.
• Russell, J. (1996). Performance and stability of aircraft. Butterworth-Heinemann.
• Secanell, M., Suleman, A. and Gamboa, P. 2006. ‘‘Design of a Morphing Airfoil Using Aerodynamic Shape Optimization,’’ AIAA Journal, 44:1550-1562.
• Selig, M. S., Donovan, J. F., & Fraser, D. B. (1989). Airfoils at low speeds.
• Somers, D. M. (1981). Design and experimental results for a natural-laminar-flow airfoil for general aviation applications (No. NASA-TP-1861).
• Sun, J. Q., Xiong, F. R., Schütze, O., & Hernández, C. (2018). Cell mapping methods. Singapore: Springer.
• Volpe, G. (1983). The inverse design of closed airfoils in transonic flow. In 21st Aerospace Sciences Meeting (p. 504).
• Xu, R. E., & Wu, Z. (2023, March). Numerical Simulation of Flow Over Airfoil and Its Optimization. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 2441, No. 1, p. 012004). IOP Publishing.