Creating NACA airfoil model

[sociallyinept]

I need to create a NACA 0010 airfoil model in UG. I found a website that gives me the x and y coordinates for the cross-section but was wondering if there is a better way. I tried the method of creating a line using equations but UG seems to choke with anything greater than a power of 2 (my equations go to power of 4).

Does anyone know of a third party software that can create the NACA airfoil and then export to either a .DXF or a .DAT file?

Any other suggestions?

 

[MBrookey]

If you have the x and y points of the cross section you could make a spline through points from file. I just tried this. I went on the net and found the point data already in a text file. I just added a 0 z value to the text file. After that I made a spline through those points from the file. And it looks really good. I'm not sure it that is what you want of not, but if you just need to define the cross section, it looks like this will work..

Hope this helps,
Brookey

 

[Xwheelguy]

Once you get the cross section curves, you can use Through Curves, Through Curve Mesh (if you have a mesh of curves) or Swept to create the actual surfaces from the curves.

I agree that the easiest approach would be importing a point data file and creating splines through those points.

Tim Flater
Senior Designer
Enkei America, Inc.

http://www.enkei.com

Some people are like slinkies....they don't really have a purpose, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

 

[ewh]

I agree with the others. This is how we construct vane-type geometry. Easy to use and easy to modify.

 

[MSPBenson]

Make sure you check your curve combs if you create the spline through a large number of points and play with the order of your spline.
The spline may look smooth but it could have inflections if you're not careful.
You can use the law curve function to do this.
Only try and plot half of the section up to the leading edge and mirror it.
I think there's a program called design foil that will output to dxf.
It can create cambered naca sections as well which is harder to do in UG.

Mark Benson
Aerodynamic Model Designer

 

[psiwak]

sociallyinept

I usualy use this procedure,
1) Create 2two *.dat files with coordinates X Y Z (add manualy) in first line add 4,5,6 columns eg.
First file for top second for bottom side
0 0 0 0 1 0 Last columns gives vector for top side
0 0 0 0 -1 0 for bottom
2) Insert==>Curves==>Splines==>From Points .....

Thats is all.
Regards
Pawel Siwak

 

[hudson888]

I tried your task, because I've done this before and it isn't as easy as it may appear on face value. It has been a while since I had to do one of I too worked in Aerospace at the time.

For this particular airfoil you can do it in two halves or as a single continuous spline. It seems that a curve of degree three works best to produce a smooth result. You can use the newer studio spline function or the older through curves method as described above.

I think that I found the same website there are downloadable .dat files with X and Y co-ordinates. For these to work in UG I had to delete the header line at the top and add Z values of zeros to the left of the x and y columns. If you want to do all the sections then I'd suggest massaging the data using something like excel to make it easier to add the Z values.

If you go insert>curve>spline then use through points with the default settings multiple segmemts and degree=3 then points from file and just select your .dat file then it should do a reasonable job off any and all the sections available from.

http://www.ae.uiuc.edu/m-selig/ads/coord_database.html

Regards

Hudson

 

[marine59]

Good ideas all.
I have done 3D turbine blades with twist, using Excel to create the data files for the section planes.
If you plan to use equations, definitely process them in Excel. Especially if you have to derive the cambered shape from the basic NACA curve.

The UG splines work well as long as you check the comb plot. If you should have a "bad" point, it should show up on the spline comb plot. I have either deleted a point, cut the spline in two with constrained slopes at the meeting point, or "dithered" the point location into place.
The above was in UG13-16.

Gerry Starkeson
Aerospace Mechanical Engineer