Glider & Sailplane Design and Analysis
MultiSurface Aerodynamics is used by designers
and engineers to solve problems associated with glider and sailplane design.
It is used to accurately compute lift and drag forces, longitudinal stability,
determine minimum sink rate, maximum lift/drag ratio and produce 3D .STL
files for manufacturing various components. MultiSurface Aerodynamics includes
a powerful airfoil analysis tool that is used to analyze cross sectional
shapes to improve the efficiency of the sailplane.
Figure 1. Sailplane modeled and rendered using MultiSurface
Aerodynamics. The fuselage is modeled using strip theory for drag estimation
and longitudinal analysis.
Figure 2. Glider model showing layout of the vortex rings on
the mean surface of the wing, fuselage, t-tail and horizontal
stabilizer/rudder.
Figure 3. Vortex lattice results for the layout in figure 2.
The figure shows the jump in pressure coefficient across the glider mean
surfaces.
Figure 4. Comparative analysis of various airfoils considered
for the glider. The figure compares cl vs cd at an arbitrary span station.
The study if performed for an airspeed of 60 mph close to sea level.
Figure 5. Comparative analysis of the entire sailplane model
which includes wings, fuselage, horizontal stabilizer/rudder and t-tail.
Results show a maximum Cl/Cd of 46 for one airfoil and 35 for another airfoil
used in the main wing. MultiSurface Aerodynamics uses the vortex-lattice
method to compute lift and induced drag. It used a novel method to
compute the profile drag and estimate lift reduction for high angles of attack
for each individual surface.
Figure 6. MultiSurface Results summary table for the glider
at 60 mph. At this speed, the glider produces 830 lbs of lift and a minimum
sink rate is computed as 120 ft per minute based on its total weight of 850
pounds.
Figure 7. Output table showing at various design stages.
MultiSurface Aerodynamics produces a table of parameters for each design
stage. This table can be printed, copied to the clipboard or export
to a .csv file for inclusion in a spread sheet program.
Other Results
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