Aircraft Force Interactive

This simulation calculates both the lift and drag of the Joukowsky family of airfoils, elliptical foils, flat surfaces, rotating cylinders and balls.

These panels are made available so that you can study the details of the conformal mapping used in the Kutta-Joukowski analysis. In the analysis, flow around a cylinder is mapped into flow around an airfoil.

Using the Input choice box on the control panel, you can display a generating plane input panel. The panel contains four input variables that control the size and location of the generating cylinder relative to the poles of the transformation, and the strength of the point vortex which is embedded in the airfoil.

According to the Kutta condition of the analysis, the strength of the vortex is set to bring the aft stagnation point to the trailing edge. You can turn the Kutta condition off by using the analysis choice box on the control panel to study the effect. A graph of the flow in the generating cylinder plane is also available using the Plot Selection option of the Output choice box on the control panel. A technical paper describing the details of this method is also available.

Please note: the simulation below is best viewed on a desktop computer. It may take a few minutes for the simulation to load.

The original source code for the simulations is available for users to download at the BGA Simulations on GitHub.