Anirudh Shukla

Design of Airfoil for Low Speed Flight Applications: a Short Design Study Anirudh Shukla

Airfoils are the basic elements from which aircraft wings are designed. Their properties help determine the properties of the wing so designed by the use of the airfoil shape. Though there are a large number of available airfoils for various applications, this study aims to produce an airfoil giving higher lift characteristics at low speeds compared to the most commonly used airfoil for these applications. This is done by combining the desired characteristics of higher lift airfoils with the ones which have higher stall angles at low speeds from the NACA series of airfoils. Thus, effectively giving a more efficient airfoil for low speed applications over a larger angle of attack range. The airfoil so designed is compared with the benchmark airfoil through simulations to evaluate the lift and the drag of the airfoils using XFOIL.