Xfoil is a free and opensource prompt tool for aerospace engineering, created by MIT, useful to Study 2D airflow.
XFOIL is an interactive program for the design and analysis of subsonic isolated airfoils.
It consists of a collection of menu-driven routines which perform various useful functions such as:
- Viscous (or inviscid) analysis of an existing airfoil, allowing
- forced or free transition
- transitional separation bubbles
- limited trailing edge separation
- lift and drag predictions just beyond CLmax
- Karman-Tsien compressibility correction
- fixed or varying Reynolds and/or Mach numbers
Airfoil design and redesign by interactive modification of surface speed distributions, in two methods:
- Full-Inverse method, based on a complex-mapping formulation
- Mixed-Inverse method, an extension of XFOIL's basic panel method
- Airfoil redesign by interactive modification of geometric parameters such as
- Max thickness and camber, highpoint position
- LE radius, TE thickness
- camber line via geometry specification
- camber line via loading change specification
- flap deflection
- explicit Contour geometry (via screen cursor)
- Blending of airfoils
- Writing and reading of airfoil coordinates and polar save files
- Plotting of geometry, pressure distributions, and multiple polars
