Airfoil Tools: Aerodynamics software for analyzing isolated airfoils and multi-element airfoils in subsonic, transonic and supersonic flows

How I Developed a Suite of Airfoil Tools

Hanley Innovations airfoil software suite was developed progressively, with each new tool building on and verifying the previous step. The objective was to create a modern set of user-friendly airfoil analysis tools for engineers, designers, and students.

Step 1. Develop an airfoil analysis method using a linear-strength panel method combined with a practical stall model. This provided a fast foundation for calculating pressure distributions, lift, drag, and pitching moment over a useful range of operating conditions.

Step 2. Integrate the Step 1 solver into an interactive multi-element airfoil tool. This extended the analysis to configurations containing flaps, slats, and multiple lifting elements while retaining the speed and simplicity of the original method.

Step 3. Develop a graphical interface using an O-grid and an Euler solver based on the Van Leer flux-vector-splitting method. This provided a compressible-flow capability and allowed the panel-method results to be compared with a higher-fidelity numerical solution.

Step 4. Apply the multi-element workflow from Step 2 to an Euler solver using the Van Leer method and a Cartesian grid. The Cartesian-grid approach simplified grid generation and provided a practical path for analyzing more complicated airfoil arrangements.

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The overall development strategy was deliberately incremental. Each stage added a new capability while providing an opportunity to verify the calculations against the earlier methods. The result is a related suite of tools covering rapid preliminary analysis, multi-element configurations, compressible flow, and Cartesian-grid CFD.

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eVTOL Transition Analysis and Aerodynamics

A recent Stallion 3D study examined the NASA RAVEN-SWFT OpenVSP model as a 1,000-pound aircraft transitioning in forward flight while retaining its six vertical rotors.

The preliminary cases covered 7, 20, 40, and 60 m/s. Stallion 3D calculated aircraft lift, drag, moments, individual rotor power, total rotor power, and the aerodynamic power required to overcome drag. The resulting tables provide a simple baseline for transition as a hexacopter.

What the Initial Sweep Shows

At low speed, most of the required power is associated with the lifting rotors. As speed increases, rotor power decreases while drag multiplied by speed increases rapidly. Several rotors also begin to autorotate in edgewise flow. This indicates that a practical transition schedule must include rotor unloading, tilt, shutdown, braking, feathering, or another method of controlling the rotor state.

The all-vertical case is not presented as the optimum solution. It is a minimum-viable baseline. The next step is to vary proprotor angle, rotor grouping, aircraft attitude, and shutdown strategy. A small number of CFD cases can first identify the useful region of the design space. More expensive cloud or high-performance computing can then be applied to optimize the promising configurations rather than search blindly.

This is the gap Stallion 3D is intended to fill: establish a credible aerodynamic and propulsion plant model early, use real forces and moments to remove poor transition concepts, and reserve large computing budgets for the designs that justify further study.

View the Tables and Transition Graph

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About Stallion 3D

Stallion 3D bridges the gap between low-fidelity panel methods and expensive CFD algorithms that run in remote data centers. It was developed to efficiently solve aerodynamic problems and deliver high-fidelity RANS solutions securely on your Windows 10/11 computer. Stallion 3D imports actual designs, automatically generates the volume grids and computes real-world solutions. Use it to verify conceptual designs across subsonic, transonic and supersonic Mach numbers.

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Hanley Innovations
Stallion 3D Aerodynamics Software
www.hanleyinnovations.com

Soccer Skills: The Aerodynamics of a Bending Soccer Field Goal

Aerodynamics of a Soccer Ball Transcript

Welcome to Bend It Like Stallion 3D. The aerodynamics of a spinning soccer ball.

The colored surface represents the local flow speed around the ball, while the streamlines show how rotation changes the wake behind the ball. Because the ball is spinning, the air flow becomes asymmetric, producing a pressure difference across the surface. This pressure difference generates a lateral force that curves the trajectory during flight.

In this example, we examine the aerodynamics of a regulation soccer ball traveling at 67 mph. The ball is spinning at 600 revolutions per minute or 10 hertz to produce a side force across the soccer pitch.

The purpose of the simulation is to predict the Magnus effect and figure out the magnitude responsible for a bending free kick.

• To start the simulation in Stallion, we import the STL file of the ball.
• Next, we set the speed, flight angle, and sea level conditions.
• Then, we set the rate of rotation to 10 herz and the normal vector to the desired spin direction.
• Finally, we click the menu to generate the grid and solve the flow.

For this case, Stallion 3D predicted approximately 5.8 Newtons of drag and 5.7 Newtons of side force. These values are consistent with the expected aerodynamic behavior of a spinning soccer ball and demonstrate the software's ability to capture rotational flow effects.

Surface pressures, force components, and aerodynamic moments are computed directly from the Navier Stokes solution. Although this example features a soccer ball, the same numerical methods are used to analyze aircraft, UAVs, rockets, and EV2L vehicles, and of course, a real football as well 😀  By changing the geometry and the operating conditions, Stallion 3D can predict the aerodynamic forces and moments required for engineering design and stability analysis.

Please visit https://www.hanleyinnovations.com to learn more about Stallion 3D