Aerodynamics is not a bolt-on feature
I became interested about aerodynamics through a experimental project I started building with Kate. It was Cozy MKIV. We have not been building that plane for quite a long time, but we got couple of parts done, for example the canard foams were cut with help from Rauno Viljanen and I managed to do quite poor quality chapter 4 bulkheads with zero understanding what I was doing structurally or otherwise.
Back then there was a concept of "speed modifications" very popular on canard forums, and I think it still is happening there, I haven't followed for a while. They are being invented most frequently by people that don't have even pilot's license yet or don't have flown any aircraft to the date, and they don't necessarily have much understanding on the aerodynamics either.
Back then I was really interested in them, and it felt like magic, you bolt on this and that improvement, and it becomes this and that much faster and more efficient. There were all kinds of concepts like cutting lower winglets, shortening wings, or even placing vortex generators to a laminar flow airfoil. I did not see back then what was wrong and why they wouldn't work as expected. Now I know. They were very entertaining reading, and actually inspired me to start thinking these things in more detail. And I am still on that road. They are not essentially bad but they may not work as the builders expect them to work because they don't understand why they are doing them, but are relying on non-scientific reasons to bolt them in.
Couple of years have passed and I have been reading about aerodynamics and trying to find out how it all works. It occurred to me at one point, that it is not a bolt-on feature you can add to existing design, but aerodynamics is all about the flow. And understanding it as a whole.
Someone might say that "by adding vortex generators, you get 5% fuel savings", that can be true only in a case where the flow otherwise preliminary separates. Good aerodynamics, is not fixing this and that with little this and that, but trying to get it all right and if still a problems persist, try to fix them then with some additional fix.
What happens if you consider adding vortex generators to Cozy MKIV front wing, in other words, the canard? The canard has Roncz RMS1145 airfoil which is about 45% laminar. Depending on where you put the vortex generators, you can vary between 0% laminar and 45% laminar. You can't get more than 45% laminar with that shape.
However, what else can happen is that, the turbulent flow attaches to a higher angle of attack on the airfoil which was designed to maintain its lift even if the laminar flow is disturbed by bugs or rain? You may get some more Cl out of the airfoil with the added vortex generators, and may be able to delay the stall angle of attack some.
But think the whole picture: the main wing-canard relationship was tuned so that the canard always stalls before the main wing. If this does not happen, the plane can enter into deep stall which is not recoverable on the particular type in question. If you delay the stall of the canard to a higher angle of attack, you are trying your luck with the main wing's Clmax and maximum angle of attack before it stalls. And it might be that you can achieve higher angle of attack with the canard than the main wing can function without stalling, and the result is pretty severe, everyone on board most likely die as a result, unless you are super-lucky like some that have survived from a deep stall crash. But wait, there was someone who also dropped from a passenger jet without parachute and survived. I would not try my luck based on the few exceptions.
Same thing what happens if you shorten a wing. Jet fighters have shorter wings and they are faasstt. Right? In case of subsonic aircraft you actually increase induced drag if you shorten the wing. You also increase wing loading, which also increases induced drag, although it reduces the wing wetted area which is desirable for lower drag. But in this case, the increase in induced drag can be such high that the plane actually becomes slower. There was one manufacturer that was doing light aircraft, and they were thinking how to convert their aircraft to LSA. The LSA version had longer wings, and instead of limiting the maximum IAS to 120 kts, the supposed to be LSA version became in fact faster than the plane with the shorter wing.
One could think also that a plane which would have smoothly rounded shape in the wing tip instead of a maybe less elegant looking cut shape would be faster. And surprise might be great when the person would notice that instead of making a faster plane, the plane actually got slower because of the modification. Here is also the thing: what you are trying to achieve - looks or relying someone's claims, or are you thinking what you are going to achieve in terms of flow and how it affects the wing tip turbulence and is what you are trying to achieve beneficial or not. The sharp cut hoerner shape in the wing tip might be there for a reason, it resists the flow from the bottom side to the upper side because of the sharp corner there. Rounding this shape makes the wing tip potentially worse. Only potentially, because you have to consider what is going on, and what you are going to achieve. There is no "yes this is right" and "no this is wrong", because everything affects to everything. But you always should know why you are going to do something. Because it is faster that way is a wrong answer. Right answer is the understanding of why. Would be better to first understand why before doing it rather than understanding why you did it and why you shouldn't have done that.
The point is, that the optimization of aerodynamics requires thinking as a whole. Improving something somewhere may not help if something else is really bad, and it can get worse by uninformed improvement somewhere. Only by knowing what you are doing, as a whole, you can do aerodynamic design which results better performance unless you are very lucky. In some cases, you might be lucky, but you could ruin your results by doing something additional uninformed where the whole picture what is going on is not taken into account.
If you want to do a optimized aerodynamic design, you have to begin with that basis, you can't bolt it on after. Cleaning up a existing aircraft is possible to some extent, but only to some extent, which is very small. An optimum design is a in balance from the aerodynamic and structural standpoint and everything is taken into account in every detail and they are understood as a whole with the whole thing. It is not a puzzle with small pieces you just put together, but a puzzle where the little pieces change every time you change something little.
If you want to clean up an existing airplane, what you need to do is that you have to understand what you are doing, in other words, what you are trying to achieve what you are changing. You have to consider all sides of the change, what it does. Things are not so simple as they might at first seem. And some things are simpler than believed. Impossible - there is no such word. You just can't bend what is possible with pure luck, it does not work in the long run. Understanding what you are trying to achieve and what are the potential consequences in good and bad for every detail helps doing less not so good decisions.
Back then there was a concept of "speed modifications" very popular on canard forums, and I think it still is happening there, I haven't followed for a while. They are being invented most frequently by people that don't have even pilot's license yet or don't have flown any aircraft to the date, and they don't necessarily have much understanding on the aerodynamics either.
Back then I was really interested in them, and it felt like magic, you bolt on this and that improvement, and it becomes this and that much faster and more efficient. There were all kinds of concepts like cutting lower winglets, shortening wings, or even placing vortex generators to a laminar flow airfoil. I did not see back then what was wrong and why they wouldn't work as expected. Now I know. They were very entertaining reading, and actually inspired me to start thinking these things in more detail. And I am still on that road. They are not essentially bad but they may not work as the builders expect them to work because they don't understand why they are doing them, but are relying on non-scientific reasons to bolt them in.
Couple of years have passed and I have been reading about aerodynamics and trying to find out how it all works. It occurred to me at one point, that it is not a bolt-on feature you can add to existing design, but aerodynamics is all about the flow. And understanding it as a whole.
Someone might say that "by adding vortex generators, you get 5% fuel savings", that can be true only in a case where the flow otherwise preliminary separates. Good aerodynamics, is not fixing this and that with little this and that, but trying to get it all right and if still a problems persist, try to fix them then with some additional fix.
What happens if you consider adding vortex generators to Cozy MKIV front wing, in other words, the canard? The canard has Roncz RMS1145 airfoil which is about 45% laminar. Depending on where you put the vortex generators, you can vary between 0% laminar and 45% laminar. You can't get more than 45% laminar with that shape.
However, what else can happen is that, the turbulent flow attaches to a higher angle of attack on the airfoil which was designed to maintain its lift even if the laminar flow is disturbed by bugs or rain? You may get some more Cl out of the airfoil with the added vortex generators, and may be able to delay the stall angle of attack some.
But think the whole picture: the main wing-canard relationship was tuned so that the canard always stalls before the main wing. If this does not happen, the plane can enter into deep stall which is not recoverable on the particular type in question. If you delay the stall of the canard to a higher angle of attack, you are trying your luck with the main wing's Clmax and maximum angle of attack before it stalls. And it might be that you can achieve higher angle of attack with the canard than the main wing can function without stalling, and the result is pretty severe, everyone on board most likely die as a result, unless you are super-lucky like some that have survived from a deep stall crash. But wait, there was someone who also dropped from a passenger jet without parachute and survived. I would not try my luck based on the few exceptions.
Same thing what happens if you shorten a wing. Jet fighters have shorter wings and they are faasstt. Right? In case of subsonic aircraft you actually increase induced drag if you shorten the wing. You also increase wing loading, which also increases induced drag, although it reduces the wing wetted area which is desirable for lower drag. But in this case, the increase in induced drag can be such high that the plane actually becomes slower. There was one manufacturer that was doing light aircraft, and they were thinking how to convert their aircraft to LSA. The LSA version had longer wings, and instead of limiting the maximum IAS to 120 kts, the supposed to be LSA version became in fact faster than the plane with the shorter wing.
One could think also that a plane which would have smoothly rounded shape in the wing tip instead of a maybe less elegant looking cut shape would be faster. And surprise might be great when the person would notice that instead of making a faster plane, the plane actually got slower because of the modification. Here is also the thing: what you are trying to achieve - looks or relying someone's claims, or are you thinking what you are going to achieve in terms of flow and how it affects the wing tip turbulence and is what you are trying to achieve beneficial or not. The sharp cut hoerner shape in the wing tip might be there for a reason, it resists the flow from the bottom side to the upper side because of the sharp corner there. Rounding this shape makes the wing tip potentially worse. Only potentially, because you have to consider what is going on, and what you are going to achieve. There is no "yes this is right" and "no this is wrong", because everything affects to everything. But you always should know why you are going to do something. Because it is faster that way is a wrong answer. Right answer is the understanding of why. Would be better to first understand why before doing it rather than understanding why you did it and why you shouldn't have done that.
The point is, that the optimization of aerodynamics requires thinking as a whole. Improving something somewhere may not help if something else is really bad, and it can get worse by uninformed improvement somewhere. Only by knowing what you are doing, as a whole, you can do aerodynamic design which results better performance unless you are very lucky. In some cases, you might be lucky, but you could ruin your results by doing something additional uninformed where the whole picture what is going on is not taken into account.
If you want to do a optimized aerodynamic design, you have to begin with that basis, you can't bolt it on after. Cleaning up a existing aircraft is possible to some extent, but only to some extent, which is very small. An optimum design is a in balance from the aerodynamic and structural standpoint and everything is taken into account in every detail and they are understood as a whole with the whole thing. It is not a puzzle with small pieces you just put together, but a puzzle where the little pieces change every time you change something little.
If you want to clean up an existing airplane, what you need to do is that you have to understand what you are doing, in other words, what you are trying to achieve what you are changing. You have to consider all sides of the change, what it does. Things are not so simple as they might at first seem. And some things are simpler than believed. Impossible - there is no such word. You just can't bend what is possible with pure luck, it does not work in the long run. Understanding what you are trying to achieve and what are the potential consequences in good and bad for every detail helps doing less not so good decisions.
Tractor propeller effect on wing behind the prop
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1987PhDT........47H
ctn.cvut.cz/ap/download.php?id=178
http://yarchive.net/mil/laminar_flow.html
http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=384807529637512;res=IELENG
ctn.cvut.cz/ap/download.php?id=178
http://yarchive.net/mil/laminar_flow.html
http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=384807529637512;res=IELENG
Length diameter ratio for laminar pods
Laminar pods need to have low length/diameter ratio to get the benefits of laminar flow. Bruce Carmichael recommends length/diameter ratio of 3.33 in his book. I accidentally found also a pdf format article from web which talks about the same thing. You can get if from here:
www.aerorag.com/resource/aircraft/aerodynamics/carmichael/min_fus_drag_carmichael.pdf
Here is another document about the matter:
ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19860014381_1986014381.pdf
www.aerorag.com/resource/aircraft/aerodynamics/carmichael/min_fus_drag_carmichael.pdf
Here is another document about the matter:
ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19860014381_1986014381.pdf
Aerodynamics is not a bolt-on feature
I became interested about aerodynamics through a experimental project I started building with Kate. It was Cozy MKIV. We have not been building that plane for quite a long time, but we got couple of parts done, for example the canard foams were cut with help from Rauno Viljanen and I managed to do quite poor quality chapter 4 bulkheads with zero understanding what I was doing structurally or otherwise.
Back then there was a concept of "speed modifications" very popular on canard forums, and I think it still is happening there, I haven't followed for a while. They are being invented most frequently by people that don't have even pilot's license yet or don't have flown any aircraft to the date, and they don't necessarily have much understanding on the aerodynamics either.
Back then I was really interested in them, and it felt like magic, you bolt on this and that improvement, and it becomes this and that much faster and more efficient. There were all kinds of concepts like cutting lower winglets, shortening wings, or even placing vortex generators to a laminar flow airfoil. I did not see back then what was wrong and why they wouldn't work as expected. Now I know. They were very entertaining reading, and actually inspired me to start thinking these things in more detail. And I am still on that road. They are not essentially bad but they may not work as the builders expect them to work because they don't understand why they are doing them, but are relying on non-scientific reasons to bolt them in.
Couple of years have passed and I have been reading about aerodynamics and trying to find out how it all works. It occurred to me at one point, that it is not a bolt-on feature you can add to existing design, but aerodynamics is all about the flow. And understanding it as a whole.
Someone might say that "by adding vortex generators, you get 5% fuel savings", that can be true only in a case where the flow otherwise preliminary separates. Good aerodynamics, is not fixing this and that with little this and that, but trying to get it all right and if still a problems persist, try to fix them then with some additional fix.
What happens if you consider adding vortex generators to Cozy MKIV front wing, in other words, the canard? The canard has Roncz RMS1145 airfoil which is about 45% laminar. Depending on where you put the vortex generators, you can vary between 0% laminar and 45% laminar. You can't get more than 45% laminar with that shape.
However, what else can happen is that, the turbulent flow attaches to a higher angle of attack on the airfoil which was designed to maintain its lift even if the laminar flow is disturbed by bugs or rain? You may get some more Cl out of the airfoil with the added vortex generators, and may be able to delay the stall angle of attack some.
But think the whole picture: the main wing-canard relationship was tuned so that the canard always stalls before the main wing. If this does not happen, the plane can enter into deep stall which is not recoverable on the particular type in question. If you delay the stall of the canard to a higher angle of attack, you are trying your luck with the main wing's Clmax and maximum angle of attack before it stalls. And it might be that you can achieve higher angle of attack with the canard than the main wing can function without stalling, and the result is pretty severe, everyone on board most likely die as a result, unless you are super-lucky like some that have survived from a deep stall crash. But wait, there was someone who also dropped from a passenger jet without parachute and survived. I would not try my luck based on the few exceptions.
Same thing what happens if you shorten a wing. Jet fighters have shorter wings and they are faasstt. Right? In case of subsonic aircraft you actually increase induced drag if you shorten the wing. You also increase wing loading, which also increases induced drag, although it reduces the wing wetted area which is desirable for lower drag. But in this case, the increase in induced drag can be such high that the plane actually becomes slower. There was one manufacturer that was doing light aircraft, and they were thinking how to convert their aircraft to LSA. The LSA version had longer wings, and instead of limiting the maximum IAS to 120 kts, the supposed to be LSA version became in fact faster than the plane with the shorter wing.
One could think also that a plane which would have smoothly rounded shape in the wing tip instead of a maybe less elegant looking cut shape would be faster. And surprise might be great when the person would notice that instead of making a faster plane, the plane actually got slower because of the modification. Here is also the thing: what you are trying to achieve - looks or relying someone's claims, or are you thinking what you are going to achieve in terms of flow and how it affects the wing tip turbulence and is what you are trying to achieve beneficial or not. The sharp cut hoerner shape in the wing tip might be there for a reason, it resists the flow from the bottom side to the upper side because of the sharp corner there. Rounding this shape makes the wing tip potentially worse. Only potentially, because you have to consider what is going on, and what you are going to achieve. There is no "yes this is right" and "no this is wrong", because everything affects to everything. But you always should know why you are going to do something. Because it is faster that way is a wrong answer. Right answer is the understanding of why. Would be better to first understand why before doing it rather than understanding why you did it and why you shouldn't have done that.
The point is, that the optimization of aerodynamics requires thinking as a whole. Improving something somewhere may not help if something else is really bad, and it can get worse by uninformed improvement somewhere. Only by knowing what you are doing, as a whole, you can do aerodynamic design which results better performance unless you are very lucky. In some cases, you might be lucky, but you could ruin your results by doing something additional uninformed where the whole picture what is going on is not taken into account.
If you want to do a optimized aerodynamic design, you have to begin with that basis, you can't bolt it on after. Cleaning up a existing aircraft is possible to some extent, but only to some extent, which is very small. An optimum design is a in balance from the aerodynamic and structural standpoint and everything is taken into account in every detail and they are understood as a whole with the whole thing. It is not a puzzle with small pieces you just put together, but a puzzle where the little pieces change every time you change something little.
If you want to clean up an existing airplane, what you need to do is that you have to understand what you are doing, in other words, what you are trying to achieve what you are changing. You have to consider all sides of the change, what it does. Things are not so simple as they might at first seem. And some things are simpler than believed. Impossible - there is no such word. You just can't bend what is possible with pure luck, it does not work in the long run. Understanding what you are trying to achieve and what are the potential consequences in good and bad for every detail helps doing less not so good decisions.
Back then there was a concept of "speed modifications" very popular on canard forums, and I think it still is happening there, I haven't followed for a while. They are being invented most frequently by people that don't have even pilot's license yet or don't have flown any aircraft to the date, and they don't necessarily have much understanding on the aerodynamics either.
Back then I was really interested in them, and it felt like magic, you bolt on this and that improvement, and it becomes this and that much faster and more efficient. There were all kinds of concepts like cutting lower winglets, shortening wings, or even placing vortex generators to a laminar flow airfoil. I did not see back then what was wrong and why they wouldn't work as expected. Now I know. They were very entertaining reading, and actually inspired me to start thinking these things in more detail. And I am still on that road. They are not essentially bad but they may not work as the builders expect them to work because they don't understand why they are doing them, but are relying on non-scientific reasons to bolt them in.
Couple of years have passed and I have been reading about aerodynamics and trying to find out how it all works. It occurred to me at one point, that it is not a bolt-on feature you can add to existing design, but aerodynamics is all about the flow. And understanding it as a whole.
Someone might say that "by adding vortex generators, you get 5% fuel savings", that can be true only in a case where the flow otherwise preliminary separates. Good aerodynamics, is not fixing this and that with little this and that, but trying to get it all right and if still a problems persist, try to fix them then with some additional fix.
What happens if you consider adding vortex generators to Cozy MKIV front wing, in other words, the canard? The canard has Roncz RMS1145 airfoil which is about 45% laminar. Depending on where you put the vortex generators, you can vary between 0% laminar and 45% laminar. You can't get more than 45% laminar with that shape.
However, what else can happen is that, the turbulent flow attaches to a higher angle of attack on the airfoil which was designed to maintain its lift even if the laminar flow is disturbed by bugs or rain? You may get some more Cl out of the airfoil with the added vortex generators, and may be able to delay the stall angle of attack some.
But think the whole picture: the main wing-canard relationship was tuned so that the canard always stalls before the main wing. If this does not happen, the plane can enter into deep stall which is not recoverable on the particular type in question. If you delay the stall of the canard to a higher angle of attack, you are trying your luck with the main wing's Clmax and maximum angle of attack before it stalls. And it might be that you can achieve higher angle of attack with the canard than the main wing can function without stalling, and the result is pretty severe, everyone on board most likely die as a result, unless you are super-lucky like some that have survived from a deep stall crash. But wait, there was someone who also dropped from a passenger jet without parachute and survived. I would not try my luck based on the few exceptions.
Same thing what happens if you shorten a wing. Jet fighters have shorter wings and they are faasstt. Right? In case of subsonic aircraft you actually increase induced drag if you shorten the wing. You also increase wing loading, which also increases induced drag, although it reduces the wing wetted area which is desirable for lower drag. But in this case, the increase in induced drag can be such high that the plane actually becomes slower. There was one manufacturer that was doing light aircraft, and they were thinking how to convert their aircraft to LSA. The LSA version had longer wings, and instead of limiting the maximum IAS to 120 kts, the supposed to be LSA version became in fact faster than the plane with the shorter wing.
One could think also that a plane which would have smoothly rounded shape in the wing tip instead of a maybe less elegant looking cut shape would be faster. And surprise might be great when the person would notice that instead of making a faster plane, the plane actually got slower because of the modification. Here is also the thing: what you are trying to achieve - looks or relying someone's claims, or are you thinking what you are going to achieve in terms of flow and how it affects the wing tip turbulence and is what you are trying to achieve beneficial or not. The sharp cut hoerner shape in the wing tip might be there for a reason, it resists the flow from the bottom side to the upper side because of the sharp corner there. Rounding this shape makes the wing tip potentially worse. Only potentially, because you have to consider what is going on, and what you are going to achieve. There is no "yes this is right" and "no this is wrong", because everything affects to everything. But you always should know why you are going to do something. Because it is faster that way is a wrong answer. Right answer is the understanding of why. Would be better to first understand why before doing it rather than understanding why you did it and why you shouldn't have done that.
The point is, that the optimization of aerodynamics requires thinking as a whole. Improving something somewhere may not help if something else is really bad, and it can get worse by uninformed improvement somewhere. Only by knowing what you are doing, as a whole, you can do aerodynamic design which results better performance unless you are very lucky. In some cases, you might be lucky, but you could ruin your results by doing something additional uninformed where the whole picture what is going on is not taken into account.
If you want to do a optimized aerodynamic design, you have to begin with that basis, you can't bolt it on after. Cleaning up a existing aircraft is possible to some extent, but only to some extent, which is very small. An optimum design is a in balance from the aerodynamic and structural standpoint and everything is taken into account in every detail and they are understood as a whole with the whole thing. It is not a puzzle with small pieces you just put together, but a puzzle where the little pieces change every time you change something little.
If you want to clean up an existing airplane, what you need to do is that you have to understand what you are doing, in other words, what you are trying to achieve what you are changing. You have to consider all sides of the change, what it does. Things are not so simple as they might at first seem. And some things are simpler than believed. Impossible - there is no such word. You just can't bend what is possible with pure luck, it does not work in the long run. Understanding what you are trying to achieve and what are the potential consequences in good and bad for every detail helps doing less not so good decisions.
Tractor propeller effect on wing behind the prop
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1987PhDT........47H
ctn.cvut.cz/ap/download.php?id=178
http://yarchive.net/mil/laminar_flow.html
http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=384807529637512;res=IELENG
ctn.cvut.cz/ap/download.php?id=178
http://yarchive.net/mil/laminar_flow.html
http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=384807529637512;res=IELENG
Length diameter ratio for laminar pods
Laminar pods need to have low length/diameter ratio to get the benefits of laminar flow. Bruce Carmichael recommends length/diameter ratio of 3.33 in his book. I accidentally found also a pdf format article from web which talks about the same thing. You can get if from here:
www.aerorag.com/resource/aircraft/aerodynamics/carmichael/min_fus_drag_carmichael.pdf
Here is another document about the matter:
ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19860014381_1986014381.pdf
www.aerorag.com/resource/aircraft/aerodynamics/carmichael/min_fus_drag_carmichael.pdf
Here is another document about the matter:
ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19860014381_1986014381.pdf
Wing droops on laminar flow section
If you have wondered why Cirrus has the discontinuity on the wings. This may answer to that to some extent. I have not found any factual information about the airfoil section used on the Cirrus other than that it is a natural laminar flow section. Cirrus VK-30 used the Jeff Viken NLF414F airfoil. I don't know if the SR20/SR22 uses the same airfoil or a different NLF section.
Anyway in this NASA tech paper it is explained how the stall resistance can be made better with the wing droop. The wing droop on the NASA test C210 actually indeed resembles the discontinuity on the Cirrus SR20/SR22 wing. Please have a look:
Wind tunnel results of the low-speed NLF(1)-0414F airfoil
Notable thing is that the Vmax-probe did not have this wing droop or any other means to prevent tip stall. And it crashed on landing possibly according to NTSB report and Bruce Carmichael's book, because of unfavorable stalling charasteristics at low Re of the airfoil caused a hard landing (which the pilot did not survive). NLF414F is not to be used without some means to prevent tip stall and to soften the otherwise very sharp stall at low Re.
Anyway in this NASA tech paper it is explained how the stall resistance can be made better with the wing droop. The wing droop on the NASA test C210 actually indeed resembles the discontinuity on the Cirrus SR20/SR22 wing. Please have a look:
Wind tunnel results of the low-speed NLF(1)-0414F airfoil
Notable thing is that the Vmax-probe did not have this wing droop or any other means to prevent tip stall. And it crashed on landing possibly according to NTSB report and Bruce Carmichael's book, because of unfavorable stalling charasteristics at low Re of the airfoil caused a hard landing (which the pilot did not survive). NLF414F is not to be used without some means to prevent tip stall and to soften the otherwise very sharp stall at low Re.
NASA NLF-115-20%
I was changing the parameters in the DesignFoil demo. And got interesting positive change for the NLF-115 airfoil: increasing the thickness to 20%, it does not effect the laminar bucket low Cl area, but it increases the laminar bucket towards higher Cl area. On other airfoils, this change usually moves the low drag bucket upwards to higher Cl, but on this airfoil, the low drag bucket seems to rather extend than move. I was trying it out with Reynolds numbers 2000000, 3000000 and 5000000.
The higher thickness (if the simulation is at all correct) would be favorable for structural reasons. The Burt Rutan's canards also use thick airfoils in the canard wing, the thickness of the original GU25 is 20%. I don't know the exact thickness of Roncz R1145MS and haven't measured (I have the Cozy MKIV plans which have the Roncz airfoil included, so I could measure it if I had time to look at it).
The larger thickness contributes to the strength achieved (only those little glass fiber spar caps are needed instead of very heavy big wing spar or alternatively a wing spar made of carbon fiber).
The higher thickness (if the simulation is at all correct) would be favorable for structural reasons. The Burt Rutan's canards also use thick airfoils in the canard wing, the thickness of the original GU25 is 20%. I don't know the exact thickness of Roncz R1145MS and haven't measured (I have the Cozy MKIV plans which have the Roncz airfoil included, so I could measure it if I had time to look at it).
The larger thickness contributes to the strength achieved (only those little glass fiber spar caps are needed instead of very heavy big wing spar or alternatively a wing spar made of carbon fiber).
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