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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1945

Summary of Airfoil Data

Recent airfoil data for both flight and wind-tunnel tests have been collected and correlated insofar as possible. The flight data consist largely of drag measurements made by the wake-survey method. Most of the data on airfoil section characteristics were obtained in the Langley two-dimensional low-turbulence pressure tunnel. Detail data necessary for the application of NACA 6-serles airfoils to wing design are presented in supplementary figures, together with recent data for the NACA 24-, 44-, and 230-series airfoils. The general methods used to derive the basic thickness forms for NACA 6- and 7-series airfoils and their corresponding pressure distributions are presented. Data and methods are given for rapidly obtaining the approximate pressure distributions for NACA four-digit, five-digit, 6-, and 7-series airfoils. The report includes an analysis of the lift, drag, pitching-moment, and critical-speed characteristics of the airfoils, together with a discussion of the effects of surface conditions. Available data on high-lift devices are presented. Problems associated with lateral-control devices, leading-edge air intakes, and interference are briefly discussed. The data indicate that the effects of surface condition on the lift and drag characteristics are at least as large as the effects of the airfoil shape and must be considered in airfoil selection and the prediction of wing characteristics. Airfoils permitting extensive laminar flow, such as the NACA 6-series airfoils, have much lower drag coefficients at high speed and cruising lift coefficients than earlier types-of airfoils if, and only if, the wing surfaces are sufficiently smooth and fair. The NACA 6-series airfoils also have favorable critical-speed characteristics and do not appear to present unusual problems associated with the application of high-lift and lateral-control devices. Much of the data given in the NACA Advance Confidential Report entitled "Preliminary Low-Drag-Airfoil and Flap Data from Tests at Large Reynolds Number and Low Turbulence," by Eastman N. Jacobs, Ira R. Abbott, and Milton Davidson, March 1942 has been corrected and included in the present paper, which supersedes the previously published paper.

LOW-DRAG↗
DOE OSTI2025

Open-Source Offshore Airfoil Summary (V.1.0)

The Open-Source Offshore (OSO) airfoils have been developed for research purposes for offshore wind turbines, offering a set of airfoils that align with modern turbine design requirements and industry design practices without proprietary constraints on research use. The eventual airfoil family will target the IEA 22 MW reference wind turbine, which was originally developed with the FFA airfoils. The two airfoils summarized in Table 1 (OSO-21-WT1 and OSO-30-WT1) started development as part of a family of airfoils being designed to target the IEA 22 MW wind turbine. The criteria used to design these airfoils are summarized in Table 1, which aim to encapsulate requirements of modern airfoils for offshore wind turbine applications, and were developed with feedback from industry and research experts. The airfoils were designed using XFOIL and candidate airfoils were then analyzed in RFOIL, which is considered more accurate than XFoil for high lift predictions of thicker airfoils. The design process for a preliminary family of airfoils is available, including a more detailed explanation of the design requirements and metrics similar to those used for these airfoils. Most of the design criteria are met for these two airfoils, with two exceptions. For both airfoils, the L/D Roughness Loss metric is exceeded (42% > 40% goal) and the desired lift coefficient margin over the design value (“CL_Margin”) was moderately exceeded (0.43 > 0.3) while smooth-stall characteristics (computed) were achieved. Note that all of the metrics were computed using RFOIL, and like other new airfoils, these will need to be experimentally validated at a range of Reynolds numbers. The airfoil coordinates will be shared publicly on Sadia National Laboratories’ public Github repository:

17 WIND ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS2001

Initial Circulation and Peak Vorticity Behavior of Vortices Shed from Airfoil Vortex Generators

An extensive parametric study of vortices shed from airfoil vortex generators has been conducted to determine the dependence of initial vortex circulation and peak vorticity on elements of the airfoil geometry and impinging flow conditions. These elements include the airfoil angle of attack, chord length, span, aspect ratio, local boundary layer thickness, and free stream Mach number. In addition, the influence of airfoil-to-airfoil spacing on the circulation and peak vorticity has been examined for pairs of co-rotating and counter-rotating vortices. The vortex generators were symmetric airfoils having a NACA-0012 cross-sectional profile. These airfoils were mounted either in isolation, or in pairs, on the surface of a straight pipe. The turbulent boundary layer thickness to pipe radius ratio was about 17 percent. The circulation and peak vorticity data were derived from cross-plane velocity measurements acquired with a seven-hole probe at one chord-length downstream of the airfoil trailing edge location. The circulation is observed to be proportional to the free-stream Mach number, the angle-of-attack, and the span-to-boundary layer thickness ratio. With these parameters held constant, the circulation is observed to fall off in monotonic fashion with increasing airfoil aspect ratio. The peak vorticity is also observed to be proportional to the free-stream Mach number, the airfoil angle-of-attack, and the span-to-boundary layer thickness ratio. Unlike circulation, however, the peak vorticity is observed to increase with increasing aspect ratio, reaching a peak value at an aspect ratio of about 2.0 before falling off again at higher values of aspect ratio. Co-rotating vortices shed from closely spaced pairs of airfoils have values of circulation and peak vorticity under those values found for vortices shed from isolated airfoils of the same geometry. Conversely, counter-rotating vortices show enhanced values of circulation and peak vorticity when compared to values obtained in isolation. The circulation may be accurately modeled with an expression based on Prandtl's relationship between finite airfoil circulation and airfoil geometry. A correlation for the peak vorticity has been derived from a conservation relationship equating the moment at the airfoil tip to the rate of angular momentum production of the shed vortex, modeled as a Lamb (ideal viscous) vortex. This technique provides excellent qualitative agreement to the observed behavior of peak vorticity for low aspect ratio airfoils typically used as vortex generators.

Wendt, Bruce J.↗
NASA NTRS1947

Drag Measurements at Transonic Speeds of NACA 65-009 Airfoils Mounted on a Freely Falling Body to Determine the Effects of Sweepback and Aspect Ratio

Drag measurements at transonic speeds on rectangular airfoils and on airfoils swept back 450 are reported. These airfoils, which were mounted on cylindrical test bodies, are part of a series being tested in free drops from high altitude to determine the effect of variation of basic airfoil parameters on airfoil drag characteristics at transonic speeds. These rectangular and swept-back airfoils had the same span, airfoil section (NACA 65-009), and chord perpendicular to the leading edge. The tests were made to compare the drag of rectangular and sweptback airfoils at a higher aspect ratio than had been used in a similar comparison reported previously. The results showed that the drag of the swept-back airfoil was less than 0.15 that of the rectangular airfoil at a Mach number of 1.00 and less than 0.30 that of the rectangular airfoil at a Mach number of 1.17. A comparison of these swept-back airfoils with similar airfoils of lower aspect ratio previously tested by the same method indicated that in the investigated speed range reduction in aspect ratio results in increased drag. In the highest part of the investigated speed range, however, the drag coefficient of the high-aspect-ratio swept-back airfoils showed a tendency to approach that of the lower-aspect-ratio swept-back airfoils. A similar comparison for the rectangular airfoils showed that delay in the drag rise and a reduction in drag at supercritical speeds can be realIzed through reduction in aspect ratio. These results confirm those reported in NACA ACR No. L5J16.

Mathews, Charles W.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

PALMO: An OVERFLOW Machine Learning Airfoil Performance Database

The OVERFLOW Machine Learning Airfoil Performance (PALMO) database has been created to enable robust modeling of airfoil performance in a variety of applications. The PALMO database uses OVERFLOW simulation data second-order accurate in time and fourth-order accurate in space with Spalart-Allmaras turbulence closure. The foundation of the in-development PALMO database is the airfoil base cube. Each base cube includes simulation data parametrized over a range of Mach numbers, Reynolds numbers, and angles-of-attack. This database includes the NACA 4-series airfoils, with parametrization in airfoil thickness and camber from an NACA 0006 to an NACA 4424. In total, 52,480 NACA 4-series OVERFLOW calculations were run on the NASA High-End Compute Capability (HECC) supercomputer. This provides high-order-accurate simulation data covering a wide range of aerospace design applications, which enables users to develop accurate airfoil performance look-up tables without additional high-performance computing. In addition to engineering design and analysis of aerospace vehicles, PALMO is well suited to be a benchmark dataset for the development and testing of machine learning methods in aerospace engineering. This work presents an example PALMO surrogate model that enables accurate airfoil performance predictions for any arbitrary combination of camber, thickness, Mach number, Reynolds number, and angle of attack within the bounds of the database. Airfoil performance tables predicted for an airfoil not used in training the model are used in three-dimensional OVERFLOW simulations to quantify the downstream accuracy on aggregate rotor performance metrics. For the NACA 3415 airfoil, which had no common thickness or camber with the training data, the surrogate predicted and CFD generated tables were within 2.1% of each other in the forward flight lift to drag metric. This suggests that performance tables generated for airfoils within the bounds of the PALMO database will yield aggregate rotor performance predictions on par with tables generated from directly running OVERFLOW airfoil calculations. The PALMO airfoil performance coefficients are available publicly.

Database↗
NASA NTRS1948

The Development of Cambered Airfoil Sections Having Favorable Lift Characteristics at Supercritical Mach Numbers

Several groups of new airfoil sections, designated as the NACA 8-series, are derived analytically to have lift characteristics at supercritical Mach numbers which are favorable in the sense that the abrupt loss of lift, characteristic of the usual airfoil section at Mach numbers above the critical, is avoided. Aerodynamic characteristics determined, from two-dimensional windtunnel tests at Mach numbers up to approximately 0.9 are presented for each of the derived airfoils. Comparisons are made between the characteristics of these airfoils and the corresponding characteristics of representative NPiCA 6-series airfoils. The experimental results confirm the design expectations in demonstrating for the NACA S-series airfoils either no variation, or an Increase from the low-speed design value, In the lift coefficient at a constant angle of attack with increasing Mach number above the critical. It was not found possible to improve the variation with Mach number of the slope of the lift curve for these airfoils above that for the NACA 6-series airfoils. The drag characteristics of the new airfoils are somewhat inferior to those of the NACA 6- series with respect to divergence with Mach number, but the pitching-moment characteristics are more favorable for the thinner new sections In demonstrating somewhat smaller variations of moment coefficient with both angle of attack and Mach number. The effect on the aero&ynamic characteristics at high Mach numbers of removing the cusp from the trailing-edge regions of two 10-percent-chord-thick NACA 6-series airfoils is determined to be negligible.

AIRFOILS - NACA 836B110 - CHAR , MOMENTS & ORDINAT↗
NASA NTRS1935

Aerodynamic characteristics of several airfoils of low aspect ratio

This paper presents the results of wind-tunnel tests of several airfoils of low aspect ratio. The airfoils included three circular Clark Y airfoils with different amounts of dihedral, two Clark Y airfoils with slots in their portions, and three flat-plate airfoils. Lift, drag, and pitching-moment characteristics of the slotted airfoils with slots open and closed; pitching moment characteristics of one of the slotted airfoils with slots open and closed; and lift characteristics of the flat-plate airfoils are included. The results reveal a definite improvement of lift, drag, and pitching-moment characteristics with increase in dihedral of the circular Clark Y wing. Lift characteristics near the stall were found to depend markedly on the shape of the extreme tip but were not greatly affected by slots through the after portion of the airfoils. Changes in plan form of the flat-plate airfoils gave erroneous indications of the effect to be expected from changes in plan form of an airfoil of Clark Y section. The minimum drag characteristics of the circular Clark Y airfoils were found to be substantially the same as for a Clark Y airfoil of conventional aspect ratio.

Zimmerman, C H↗
NASA NTRS2008

Spline-Based Smoothing of Airfoil Curvatures

Constrained fitting for airfoil curvature smoothing (CFACS) is a splinebased method of interpolating airfoil surface coordinates (and, concomitantly, airfoil thicknesses) between specified discrete design points so as to obtain smoothing of surface-curvature profiles in addition to basic smoothing of surfaces. CFACS was developed in recognition of the fact that the performance of a transonic airfoil is directly related to both the curvature profile and the smoothness of the airfoil surface. Older methods of interpolation of airfoil surfaces involve various compromises between smoothing of surfaces and exact fitting of surfaces to specified discrete design points. While some of the older methods take curvature profiles into account, they nevertheless sometimes yield unfavorable results, including curvature oscillations near end points and substantial deviations from desired leading-edge shapes. In CFACS as in most of the older methods, one seeks a compromise between smoothing and exact fitting. Unlike in the older methods, the airfoil surface is modified as little as possible from its original specified form and, instead, is smoothed in such a way that the curvature profile becomes a smooth fit of the curvature profile of the original airfoil specification. CFACS involves a combination of rigorous mathematical modeling and knowledge-based heuristics. Rigorous mathematical formulation provides assurance of removal of undesirable curvature oscillations with minimum modification of the airfoil geometry. Knowledge-based heuristics bridge the gap between theory and designers best practices. In CFACS, one of the measures of the deviation of an airfoil surface from smoothness is the sum of squares of the jumps in the third derivatives of a cubicspline interpolation of the airfoil data. This measure is incorporated into a formulation for minimizing an overall deviation- from-smoothness measure of the airfoil data within a specified fitting error tolerance. CFACS has been extensively tested on a number of supercritical airfoil data sets generated by inverse design and optimization computer programs. All of the smoothing results show that CFACS is able to generate unbiased smooth fits of curvature profiles, trading small modifications of geometry for increasing curvature smoothness by eliminating curvature oscillations and bumps (see figure).

Li, W.↗