Five Benefits of Interactive Airplane Design

Its amazing how quickly a designer can compose a working airplane with 3DFoil, our interactive analysis and design tool.  The following video shows how airfoils and 3D planform shapes work together to size & determine stability of a new designs.

Since interactive is a word that is often used to describe computer programs, I would like to list 5 benefits that 3DFoil brings to interactive aircraft and hydrofoil design.

Benefit 1:  The airfoils are all built into the program.  Unlike other CAD software, you do not have to browse the web to find airfoil shapes for your new designs.

Benefit 2:  You can analyze the airfoils on the fly.  You can test and compare candidate airfoils in a matter of second using the built-in airfoil analysis tool.  Compare  Cl, Cd, moments and the angle for maximum lift of your airfoil shapes.

Benefit 3: Interactive means using the airfoils in 3D wing planform shapes and immediately getting the lift, drag (vortex and profile) and moments.  As shown in the video, this only take a few seconds.

Benefit 4: An airplane is like a bicycle (the Wright brothers built bicycles).  It must support a payload and it should be properly balanced in flight.  This means interactively determining both the longitudinal and lateral stability derivatives to ensure the performance of your design.

Design and analysis of kite-surfacing canopy.

Benefit 5: 3DFoil interactive means that you will have something concrete to show for your efforts. The software can export both .dxf files of the airfoils and a 3D .STL file of the surfaces.  You can use these for 3D-printing a fully working prototype for wind tunnel testing.

More information about 3DFoil can be found at http://www.hanleyinnovations.com/3dfoil.html

Thanks for reading.  Do not hesitate to contact us at (352) 240-3658 for more information.